THE kettle began it! Don't tell me what Mrs. Peerybingle said. I
know better. Mrs. Peerybingle may leave it on record to the end of
time that she couldn't say which of them began it; but, I say the
kettle did. I ought to know, I hope! The kettle began it, full
five minutes by the little waxy-faced Dutch clock in the corner,
before the Cricket uttered a chirp.

As if the clock hadn't finished striking, and the convulsive little
Haymaker at the top of it, jerking away right and left with a
scythe in front of a Moorish Palace, hadn't mowed down half an acre
of imaginary grass before the Cricket joined in at all!

Why, I am not naturally positive. Every one knows that. I
wouldn't set my own opinion against the opinion of Mrs.
Peerybingle, unless I were quite sure, on any account whatever.
Nothing should induce me. But, this is a question of act. And the
fact is, that the kettle began it, at least five minutes before the
Cricket gave any sign of being in existence. Contradict me, and
I'll say ten.

Let me narrate exactly how it happened. I should have proceeded to
do so in my very first word, but for this plain consideration - if
I am to tell a story I must begin at the beginning; and how is it
possible to begin at the beginning, without beginning at the
kettle?

It appeared as if there were a sort of match, or trial of skill,
you must understand, between the kettle and the Cricket. And this
is what led to it, and how it came about.

Mrs. Peerybingle, going out into the raw twilight, and clicking
over the wet stones in a pair of pattens that worked innumerable
rough impressions of the first proposition in Euclid all about the
yard - Mrs. Peerybingle filled the kettle at the water-butt.
Presently returning, less the pattens (and a good deal less, for
they were tall and Mrs. Peerybingle was but short), she set the
kettle on the fire. In doing which she lost her temper, or mislaid
it for an instant; for, the water being uncomfortably cold, and in
that slippy, slushy, sleety sort of state wherein it seems to
penetrate through every kind of substance, patten rings included -
had laid hold of Mrs. Peerybingle's toes, and even splashed her
legs. And when we rather plume ourselves (with reason too) upon
our legs, and keep ourselves particularly neat in point of
stockings, we find this, for the moment, hard to bear.

Besides, the kettle was aggravating and obstinate. It wouldn't
allow itself to be adjusted on the top bar; it wouldn't hear of
accommodating itself kindly to the knobs of coal; it WOULD lean
forward with a drunken air, and dribble, a very Idiot of a kettle,
on the hearth. It was quarrelsome, and hissed and spluttered
morosely at the fire. To sum up all, the lid, resisting Mrs.
Peerybingle's fingers, first of all turned topsy-turvy, and then,
with an ingenious pertinacity deserving of a better cause, dived
sideways in - down to the very bottom of the kettle. And the hull
of the Royal George has never made half the monstrous resistance to
coming out of the water, which the lid of that kettle employed
against Mrs. Peerybingle, before she got it up again.

It looked sullen and pig-headed enough, even then; carrying its
handle with an air of defiance, and cocking its spout pertly and
mockingly at Mrs. Peerybingle, as if it said, 'I won't boil.
Nothing shall induce me!'

But Mrs. Peerybingle, with restored good humour, dusted her chubby
little hands against each other, and sat down before the kettle,
laughing. Meantime, the jolly blaze uprose and fell, flashing and
gleaming on the little Haymaker at the top of the Dutch clock,
until one might have thought he stood stock still before the
Moorish Palace, and nothing was in motion but the flame.

He was on the move, however; and had his spasms, two to the second,
all right and regular. But, his sufferings when the clock was
going to strike, were frightful to behold; and, when a Cuckoo
looked out of a trap-door in the Palace, and gave note six times,
it shook him, each time, like a spectral voice - or like a
something wiry, plucking at his legs.

It was not until a violent commotion and a whirring noise among the
weights and ropes below him had quite subsided, that this terrified
Haymaker became himself again. Nor was he startled without reason;
for these rattling, bony skeletons of clocks are very disconcerting
in their operation, and I wonder very much how any set of men, but
most of all how Dutchmen, can have had a liking to invent them.
There is a popular belief that Dutchmen love broad cases and much
clothing for their own lower selves; and they might know better
than to leave their clocks so very lank and unprotected, surely.

Now it was, you observe, that the kettle began to spend the
evening. Now it was, that the kettle, growing mellow and musical,
began to have irrepressible gurglings in its throat, and to indulge
in short vocal snorts, which it checked in the bud, as if it hadn't
quite made up its mind yet, to be good company. Now it was, that
after two or three such vain attempts to stifle its convivial
sentiments, it threw off all moroseness, all reserve, and burst
into a stream of song so cosy and hilarious, as never maudlin
nightingale yet formed the least idea of.

So plain too! Bless you, you might have understood it like a book
- better than some books you and I could name, perhaps. With its
warm breath gushing forth in a light cloud which merrily and
gracefully ascended a few feet, then hung about the chimney-corner
as its own domestic Heaven, it trolled its song with that strong
energy of cheerfulness, that its iron body hummed and stirred upon
the fire; and the lid itself, the recently rebellious lid - such is
the influence of a bright example - performed a sort of jig, and
clattered like a deaf and dumb young cymbal that had never known
the use of its twin brother.

That this song of the kettle's was a song of invitation and welcome
to somebody out of doors: to somebody at that moment coming on,
towards the snug small home and the crisp fire: there is no doubt
whatever. Mrs. Peerybingle knew it, perfectly, as she sat musing
before the hearth. It's a dark night, sang the kettle, and the
rotten leaves are lying by the way; and, above, all is mist and
darkness, and, below, all is mire and clay; and there's only one
relief in all the sad and murky air; and I don't know that it is
one, for it's nothing but a glare; of deep and angry crimson, where
the sun and wind together; set a brand upon the clouds for being
guilty of such weather; and the widest open country is a long dull
streak of black; and there's hoar-frost on the finger-post, and
thaw upon the track; and the ice it isn't water, and the water
isn't free; and you couldn't say that anything is what it ought to
be; but he's coming, coming, coming! -

And here, if you like, the Cricket DID chime in! with a Chirrup,
Chirrup, Chirrup of such magnitude, by way of chorus; with a voice
so astoundingly disproportionate to its size, as compared with the
kettle; (size! you couldn't see it!) that if it had then and there
burst itself like an overcharged gun, if it had fallen a victim on
the spot, and chirruped its little body into fifty pieces, it would
have seemed a natural and inevitable consequence, for which it had
expressly laboured.

The kettle had had the last of its solo performance. It persevered
with undiminished ardour; but the Cricket took first fiddle and
kept it. Good Heaven, how it chirped! Its shrill, sharp, piercing
voice resounded through the house, and seemed to twinkle in the
outer darkness like a star. There was an indescribable little
trill and tremble in it, at its loudest, which suggested its being
carried off its legs, and made to leap again, by its own intense
enthusiasm. Yet they went very well together, the Cricket and the
kettle. The burden of the song was still the same; and louder,
louder, louder still, they sang it in their emulation.

The fair little listener - for fair she was, and young: though
something of what is called the dumpling shape; but I don't myself
object to that - lighted a candle, glanced at the Haymaker on the
top of the clock, who was getting in a pretty average crop of
minutes; and looked out of the window, where she saw nothing, owing
to the darkness, but her own face imaged in the glass. And my
opinion is (and so would yours have been), that she might have
looked a long way, and seen nothing half so agreeable. When she
came back, and sat down in her former seat, the Cricket and the
kettle were still keeping it up, with a perfect fury of
competition. The kettle's weak side clearly being, that he didn't
know when he was beat.

There was all the excitement of a race about it. Chirp, chirp,
chirp! Cricket a mile ahead. Hum, hum, hum - m - m! Kettle
making play in the distance, like a great top. Chirp, chirp,
chirp! Cricket round the corner. Hum, hum, hum - m - m! Kettle
sticking to him in his own way; no idea of giving in. Chirp,
chirp, chirp! Cricket fresher than ever. Hum, hum, hum - m - m!
Kettle slow and steady. Chirp, chirp, chirp! Cricket going in to
finish him. Hum, hum, hum - m - m! Kettle not to be finished.
Until at last they got so jumbled together, in the hurry-skurry,
helter-skelter, of the match, that whether the kettle chirped and
the Cricket hummed, or the Cricket chirped and the kettle hummed,
or they both chirped and both hummed, it would have taken a clearer
head than yours or mine to have decided with anything like
certainty. But, of this, there is no doubt: that, the kettle and
the Cricket, at one and the same moment, and by some power of
amalgamation best known to themselves, sent, each, his fireside
song of comfort streaming into a ray of the candle that shone out
through the window, and a long way down the lane. And this light,
bursting on a certain person who, on the instant, approached
towards it through the gloom, expressed the whole thing to him,
literally in a twinkling, and cried, 'Welcome home, old fellow!
Welcome home, my boy!'

This end attained, the kettle, being dead beat, boiled over, and
was taken off the fire. Mrs. Peerybingle then went running to the
door, where, what with the wheels of a cart, the tramp of a horse,
the voice of a man, the tearing in and out of an excited dog, and
the surprising and mysterious appearance of a baby, there was soon
the very What's-his-name to pay.

Where the baby came from, or how Mrs. Peerybingle got hold of it in
that flash of time, I don't know. But a live baby there was, in
Mrs. Peerybingle's arms; and a pretty tolerable amount of pride she
seemed to have in it, when she was drawn gently to the fire, by a
sturdy figure of a man, much taller and much older than herself,
who had to stoop a long way down, to kiss her. But she was worth
the trouble. Six foot six, with the lumbago, might have done it.

'Oh goodness, John!' said Mrs. P. 'What a state you are in with
the weather!'

He was something the worse for it, undeniably. The thick mist hung
in clots upon his eyelashes like candied thaw; and between the fog
and fire together, there were rainbows in his very whiskers.

'Why, you see, Dot,' John made answer, slowly, as he unrolled a
shawl from about his throat; and warmed his hands; 'it - it an't
exactly summer weather. So, no wonder.'

'I wish you wouldn't call me Dot, John. I don't like it,' said
Mrs. Peerybingle: pouting in a way that clearly showed she DID
like it, very much.

'Why what else are you?' returned John, looking down upon her with
a smile, and giving her waist as light a squeeze as his huge hand
and arm could give. 'A dot and' - here he glanced at the baby - 'a
dot and carry - I won't say it, for fear I should spoil it; but I
was very near a joke. I don't know as ever I was nearer.'

He was often near to something or other very clever, by his own
account: this lumbering, slow, honest John; this John so heavy,
but so light of spirit; so rough upon the surface, but so gentle at
the core; so dull without, so quick within; so stolid, but so good!
Oh Mother Nature, give thy children the true poetry of heart that
hid itself in this poor Carrier's breast - he was but a Carrier by
the way - and we can bear to have them talking prose, and leading
lives of prose; and bear to bless thee for their company!

It was pleasant to see Dot, with her little figure, and her baby in
her arms: a very doll of a baby: glancing with a coquettish
thoughtfulness at the fire, and inclining her delicate little head
just enough on one side to let it rest in an odd, half-natural,
half-affected, wholly nestling and agreeable manner, on the great
rugged figure of the Carrier. It was pleasant to see him, with his
tender awkwardness, endeavouring to adapt his rude support to her
slight need, and make his burly middle-age a leaning-staff not
inappropriate to her blooming youth. It was pleasant to observe
how Tilly Slowboy, waiting in the background for the baby, took
special cognizance (though in her earliest teens) of this grouping;
and stood with her mouth and eyes wide open, and her head thrust
forward, taking it in as if it were air. Nor was it less agreeable
to observe how John the Carrier, reference being made by Dot to the
aforesaid baby, checked his hand when on the point of touching the
infant, as if he thought he might crack it; and bending down,
surveyed it from a safe distance, with a kind of puzzled pride,
such as an amiable mastiff might be supposed to show, if he found
himself, one day, the father of a young canary.

'An't he beautiful, John? Don't he look precious in his sleep?'

'Very precious,' said John. 'Very much so. He generally IS
asleep, an't he?'

'It an't right for him to turn 'em up in that way!' said the
astonished Carrier, 'is it? See how he's winking with both of 'em
at once! And look at his mouth! Why he's gasping like a gold and
silver fish!'

'You don't deserve to be a father, you don't,' said Dot, with all
the dignity of an experienced matron. 'But how should you know
what little complaints children are troubled with, John! You
wouldn't so much as know their names, you stupid fellow.' And when
she had turned the baby over on her left arm, and had slapped its
back as a restorative, she pinched her husband's ear, laughing.

'No,' said John, pulling off his outer coat. 'It's very true, Dot.
I don't know much about it. I only know that I've been fighting
pretty stiffly with the wind to-night. It's been blowing north-
east, straight into the cart, the whole way home.'

'Poor old man, so it has!' cried Mrs. Peerybingle, instantly
becoming very active. 'Here! Take the precious darling, Tilly,
while I make myself of some use. Bless it, I could smother it with
kissing it, I could! Hie then, good dog! Hie, Boxer, boy! Only
let me make the tea first, John; and then I'll help you with the
parcels, like a busy bee. "How doth the little" - and all the rest
of it, you know, John. Did you ever learn "how doth the little,"
when you went to school, John?'

'Not to quite know it,' John returned. 'I was very near it once.
But I should only have spoilt it, I dare say.'

'Ha ha,' laughed Dot. She had the blithest little laugh you ever
heard. 'What a dear old darling of a dunce you are, John, to be
sure!'

Not at all disputing this position, John went out to see that the
boy with the lantern, which had been dancing to and fro before the
door and window, like a Will of the Wisp, took due care of the
horse; who was fatter than you would quite believe, if I gave you
his measure, and so old that his birthday was lost in the mists of
antiquity. Boxer, feeling that his attentions were due to the
family in general, and must be impartially distributed, dashed in
and out with bewildering inconstancy; now, describing a circle of
short barks round the horse, where he was being rubbed down at the
stable-door; now feigning to make savage rushes at his mistress,
and facetiously bringing himself to sudden stops; now, eliciting a
shriek from Tilly Slowboy, in the low nursing-chair near the fire,
by the unexpected application of his moist nose to her countenance;
now, exhibiting an obtrusive interest in the baby; now, going round
and round upon the hearth, and lying down as if he had established
himself for the night; now, getting up again, and taking that
nothing of a fag-end of a tail of his, out into the weather, as if
he had just remembered an appointment, and was off, at a round
trot, to keep it.

'There! There's the teapot, ready on the hob!' said Dot; as
briskly busy as a child at play at keeping house. 'And there's the
old knuckle of ham; and there's the butter; and there's the crusty
loaf, and all! Here's the clothes-basket for the small parcels,
John, if you've got any there - where are you, John?'

'Don't let the dear child fall under the grate, Tilly, whatever you
do!'

It may be noted of Miss Slowboy, in spite of her rejecting the
caution with some vivacity, that she had a rare and surprising
talent for getting this baby into difficulties and had several
times imperilled its short life, in a quiet way peculiarly her own.
She was of a spare and straight shape, this young lady, insomuch
that her garments appeared to be in constant danger of sliding off
those sharp pegs, her shoulders, on which they were loosely hung.
Her costume was remarkable for the partial development, on all
possible occasions, of some flannel vestment of a singular
structure; also for affording glimpses, in the region of the back,
of a corset, or pair of stays, in colour a dead-green. Being
always in a state of gaping admiration at everything, and absorbed,
besides, in the perpetual contemplation of her mistress's
perfections and the baby's, Miss Slowboy, in her little errors of
judgment, may be said to have done equal honour to her head and to
her heart; and though these did less honour to the baby's head,
which they were the occasional means of bringing into contact with
deal doors, dressers, stair-rails, bed-posts, and other foreign
substances, still they were the honest results of Tilly Slowboy's
constant astonishment at finding herself so kindly treated, and
installed in such a comfortable home. For, the maternal and
paternal Slowboy were alike unknown to Fame, and Tilly had been
bred by public charity, a foundling; which word, though only
differing from fondling by one vowel's length, is very different in
meaning, and expresses quite another thing.

To have seen little Mrs. Peerybingle come back with her husband,
tugging at the clothes-basket, and making the most strenuous
exertions to do nothing at all (for he carried it), would have
amused you almost as much as it amused him. It may have
entertained the Cricket too, for anything I know; but, certainly,
it now began to chirp again, vehemently.

'Heyday!' said John, in his slow way. 'It's merrier than ever, to-
night, I think.'

'And it's sure to bring us good fortune, John! It always has done
so. To have a Cricket on the Hearth, is the luckiest thing in all
the world!'

John looked at her as if he had very nearly got the thought into
his head, that she was his Cricket in chief, and he quite agreed
with her. But, it was probably one of his narrow escapes, for he
said nothing.

'The first time I heard its cheerful little note, John, was on that
night when you brought me home - when you brought me to my new home
here; its little mistress. Nearly a year ago. You recollect,
John?'

O yes. John remembered. I should think so!

'Its chirp was such a welcome to me! It seemed so full of promise
and encouragement. It seemed to say, you would be kind and gentle
with me, and would not expect (I had a fear of that, John, then) to
find an old head on the shoulders of your foolish little wife.'

John thoughtfully patted one of the shoulders, and then the head,
as though he would have said No, no; he had had no such
expectation; he had been quite content to take them as they were.
And really he had reason. They were very comely.

'It spoke the truth, John, when it seemed to say so; for you have
ever been, I am sure, the best, the most considerate, the most
affectionate of husbands to me. This has been a happy home, John;
and I love the Cricket for its sake!'

'Why so do I then,' said the Carrier. 'So do I, Dot.'

'I love it for the many times I have heard it, and the many
thoughts its harmless music has given me. Sometimes, in the
twilight, when I have felt a little solitary and down-hearted, John
- before baby was here to keep me company and make the house gay -
when I have thought how lonely you would be if I should die; how
lonely I should be if I could know that you had lost me, dear; its
Chirp, Chirp, Chirp upon the hearth, has seemed to tell me of
another little voice, so sweet, so very dear to me, before whose
coming sound my trouble vanished like a dream. And when I used to
fear - I did fear once, John, I was very young you know - that ours
might prove to be an ill-assorted marriage, I being such a child,
and you more like my guardian than my husband; and that you might
not, however hard you tried, be able to learn to love me, as you
hoped and prayed you might; its Chirp, Chirp, Chirp has cheered me
up again, and filled me with new trust and confidence. I was
thinking of these things to-night, dear, when I sat expecting you;
and I love the Cricket for their sake!'

'And so do I,' repeated John. 'But, Dot? I hope and pray that I
might learn to love you? How you talk! I had learnt that, long
before I brought you here, to be the Cricket's little mistress,
Dot!'

She laid her hand, an instant, on his arm, and looked up at him
with an agitated face, as if she would have told him something.
Next moment she was down upon her knees before the basket, speaking
in a sprightly voice, and busy with the parcels.

'There are not many of them to-night, John, but I saw some goods
behind the cart, just now; and though they give more trouble,
perhaps, still they pay as well; so we have no reason to grumble,
have we? Besides, you have been delivering, I dare say, as you
came along?'

'Oh yes,' John said. 'A good many.'

'Why what's this round box? Heart alive, John, it's a wedding-
cake!'

'Leave a woman alone to find out that,' said John, admiringly.
'Now a man would never have thought of it. Whereas, it's my belief
that if you was to pack a wedding-cake up in a tea-chest, or a
turn-up bedstead, or a pickled salmon keg, or any unlikely thing, a
woman would be sure to find it out directly. Yes; I called for it
at the pastry-cook's.'

'And it weighs I don't know what - whole hundredweights!' cried
Dot, making a great demonstration of trying to lift it.

'Whose is it, John? Where is it going?'

'Read the writing on the other side,' said John.

'Why, John! My Goodness, John!'

'Ah! who'd have thought it!' John returned.

'You never mean to say,' pursued Dot, sitting on the floor and
shaking her head at him, 'that it's Gruff and Tackleton the
toymaker!'

John nodded.

Mrs. Peerybingle nodded also, fifty times at least. Not in assent
- in dumb and pitying amazement; screwing up her lips the while
with all their little force (they were never made for screwing up;
I am clear of that), and looking the good Carrier through and
through, in her abstraction. Miss Slowboy, in the mean time, who
had a mechanical power of reproducing scraps of current
conversation for the delectation of the baby, with all the sense
struck out of them, and all the nouns changed into the plural
number, inquired aloud of that young creature, Was it Gruffs and
Tackletons the toymakers then, and Would it call at Pastry-cooks
for wedding-cakes, and Did its mothers know the boxes when its
fathers brought them homes; and so on.

'And that is really to come about!' said Dot. 'Why, she and I were
girls at school together, John.'

He might have been thinking of her, or nearly thinking of her,
perhaps, as she was in that same school time. He looked upon her
with a thoughtful pleasure, but he made no answer.

'And he's as old! As unlike her! - Why, how many years older than
you, is Gruff and Tackleton, John?'

'How many more cups of tea shall I drink to-night at one sitting,
than Gruff and Tackleton ever took in four, I wonder!' replied
John, good-humouredly, as he drew a chair to the round table, and
began at the cold ham. 'As to eating, I eat but little; but that
little I enjoy, Dot.'

Even this, his usual sentiment at meal times, one of his innocent
delusions (for his appetite was always obstinate, and flatly
contradicted him), awoke no smile in the face of his little wife,
who stood among the parcels, pushing the cake-box slowly from her
with her foot, and never once looked, though her eyes were cast
down too, upon the dainty shoe she generally was so mindful of.
Absorbed in thought, she stood there, heedless alike of the tea and
John (although he called to her, and rapped the table with his
knife to startle her), until he rose and touched her on the arm;
when she looked at him for a moment, and hurried to her place
behind the teaboard, laughing at her negligence. But, not as she
had laughed before. The manner and the music were quite changed.

The Cricket, too, had stopped. Somehow the room was not so
cheerful as it had been. Nothing like it.

'So, these are all the parcels, are they, John?' she said, breaking
a long silence, which the honest Carrier had devoted to the
practical illustration of one part of his favourite sentiment -
certainly enjoying what he ate, if it couldn't be admitted that he
ate but little. 'So, these are all the parcels; are they, John?'

'That's all,' said John. 'Why - no - I - ' laying down his knife
and fork, and taking a long breath. 'I declare - I've clean
forgotten the old gentleman!'

'The old gentleman?'

'In the cart,' said John. 'He was asleep, among the straw, the
last time I saw him. I've very nearly remembered him, twice, since
I came in; but he went out of my head again. Holloa! Yahip there!
Rouse up! That's my hearty!'

John said these latter words outside the door, whither he had
hurried with the candle in his hand.

Miss Slowboy, conscious of some mysterious reference to The Old
Gentleman, and connecting in her mystified imagination certain
associations of a religious nature with the phrase, was so
disturbed, that hastily rising from the low chair by the fire to
seek protection near the skirts of her mistress, and coming into
contact as she crossed the doorway with an ancient Stranger, she
instinctively made a charge or butt at him with the only offensive
instrument within her reach. This instrument happening to be the
baby, great commotion and alarm ensued, which the sagacity of Boxer
rather tended to increase; for, that good dog, more thoughtful than
its master, had, it seemed, been watching the old gentleman in his
sleep, lest he should walk off with a few young poplar trees that
were tied up behind the cart; and he still attended on him very
closely, worrying his gaiters in fact, and making dead sets at the
buttons.

'You're such an undeniable good sleeper, sir,' said John, when
tranquillity was restored; in the mean time the old gentleman had
stood, bareheaded and motionless, in the centre of the room; 'that
I have half a mind to ask you where the other six are - only that
would be a joke, and I know I should spoil it. Very near though,'
murmured the Carrier, with a chuckle; 'very near!'

The Stranger, who had long white hair, good features, singularly
bold and well defined for an old man, and dark, bright, penetrating
eyes, looked round with a smile, and saluted the Carrier's wife by
gravely inclining his head.

His garb was very quaint and odd - a long, long way behind the
time. Its hue was brown, all over. In his hand he held a great
brown club or walking-stick; and striking this upon the floor, it
fell asunder, and became a chair. On which he sat down, quite
composedly.

'There!' said the Carrier, turning to his wife. 'That's the way I
found him, sitting by the roadside! Upright as a milestone. And
almost as deaf.'

'Sitting in the open air, John!'

'In the open air,' replied the Carrier, 'just at dusk. "Carriage
Paid," he said; and gave me eighteenpence. Then he got in. And
there he is.'

'He's going, John, I think!'

Not at all. He was only going to speak.

'If you please, I was to be left till called for,' said the
Stranger, mildly. 'Don't mind me.'

With that, he took a pair of spectacles from one of his large
pockets, and a book from another, and leisurely began to read.
Making no more of Boxer than if he had been a house lamb!

The Carrier and his wife exchanged a look of perplexity. The
Stranger raised his head; and glancing from the latter to the
former, said,

'Your daughter, my good friend?'

'Wife,' returned John.

'Niece?' said the Stranger.

'Wife,' roared John.

'Indeed?' observed the Stranger. 'Surely? Very young!'

He quietly turned over, and resumed his reading. But, before he
could have read two lines, he again interrupted himself to say:

'Baby, yours?'

John gave him a gigantic nod; equivalent to an answer in the
affirmative, delivered through a speaking trumpet.

'Girl?'

'Bo-o-oy!' roared John.

'Also very young, eh?'

Mrs. Peerybingle instantly struck in. 'Two months and three da-
ays! Vaccinated just six weeks ago-o! Took very fine-ly!
Considered, by the doctor, a remarkably beautiful chi-ild! Equal
to the general run of children at five months o-old! Takes notice,
in a way quite wonderful! May seem impossible to you, but feels
his legs al-ready!'

Here the breathless little mother, who had been shrieking these
short sentences into the old man's ear, until her pretty face was
crimsoned, held up the Baby before him as a stubborn and triumphant
fact; while Tilly Slowboy, with a melodious cry of 'Ketcher,
Ketcher' - which sounded like some unknown words, adapted to a
popular Sneeze - performed some cow-like gambols round that all
unconscious Innocent.

'Hark! He's called for, sure enough,' said John. 'There's
somebody at the door. Open it, Tilly.'

Before she could reach it, however, it was opened from without;
being a primitive sort of door, with a latch, that any one could
lift if he chose - and a good many people did choose, for all kinds
of neighbours liked to have a cheerful word or two with the
Carrier, though he was no great talker himself. Being opened, it
gave admission to a little, meagre, thoughtful, dingy-faced man,
who seemed to have made himself a great-coat from the sack-cloth
covering of some old box; for, when he turned to shut the door, and
keep the weather out, he disclosed upon the back of that garment,
the inscription G & T in large black capitals. Also the word GLASS
in bold characters.

He didn't look at her though; he had a wandering and thoughtful eye
which seemed to be always projecting itself into some other time
and place, no matter what he said; a description which will equally
apply to his voice.

'Or at John for another,' said Caleb. 'Or at Tilly, as far as that
goes. Or certainly at Boxer.'

'Busy just now, Caleb?' asked the Carrier.

'Why, pretty well, John,' he returned, with the distraught air of a
man who was casting about for the Philosopher's stone, at least.
'Pretty much so. There's rather a run on Noah's Arks at present.
I could have wished to improve upon the Family, but I don't see how
it's to be done at the price. It would be a satisfaction to one's
mind, to make it clearer which was Shems and Hams, and which was
Wives. Flies an't on that scale neither, as compared with
elephants you know! Ah! well! Have you got anything in the parcel
line for me, John?'

The Carrier put his hand into a pocket of the coat he had taken
off; and brought out, carefully preserved in moss and paper, a tiny
flower-pot.

'There it is!' he said, adjusting it with great care. 'Not so much
as a leaf damaged. Full of buds!'

Caleb's dull eye brightened, as he took it, and thanked him.

'Dear, Caleb,' said the Carrier. 'Very dear at this season.'

'Never mind that. It would be cheap to me, whatever it cost,'
returned the little man. 'Anything else, John?'

'A small box,' replied the Carrier. 'Here you are!'

'"For Caleb Plummer,"' said the little man, spelling out the
direction. '"With Cash." With Cash, John? I don't think it's for
me.'

'With Care,' returned the Carrier, looking over his shoulder.
'Where do you make out cash?'

'Oh! To be sure!' said Caleb. 'It's all right. With care! Yes,
yes; that's mine. It might have been with cash, indeed, if my dear
Boy in the Golden South Americas had lived, John. You loved him
like a son; didn't you? You needn't say you did. I know, of
course. "Caleb Plummer. With care." Yes, yes, it's all right.
It's a box of dolls' eyes for my daughter's work. I wish it was
her own sight in a box, John.'

'I wish it was, or could be!' cried the Carrier.

'Thank'ee,' said the little man. 'You speak very hearty. To think
that she should never see the Dolls - and them a-staring at her, so
bold, all day long! That's where it cuts. What's the damage,
John?'

'Something for our Governor, eh?' said Caleb, after pondering a
little while. 'To be sure. That's what I came for; but my head's
so running on them Arks and things! He hasn't been here, has he?'

'Not he,' returned the Carrier. 'He's too busy, courting.'

'He's coming round though,' said Caleb; 'for he told me to keep on
the near side of the road going home, and it was ten to one he'd
take me up. I had better go, by the bye. - You couldn't have the
goodness to let me pinch Boxer's tail, Mum, for half a moment,
could you?'

'Why, Caleb! what a question!'

'Oh never mind, Mum,' said the little man. 'He mightn't like it
perhaps. There's a small order just come in, for barking dogs; and
I should wish to go as close to Natur' as I could, for sixpence.
That's all. Never mind, Mum.'

It happened opportunely, that Boxer, without receiving the proposed
stimulus, began to bark with great zeal. But, as this implied the
approach of some new visitor, Caleb, postponing his study from the
life to a more convenient season, shouldered the round box, and
took a hurried leave. He might have spared himself the trouble,
for he met the visitor upon the threshold.

'Oh! You are here, are you? Wait a bit. I'll take you home.
John Peerybingle, my service to you. More of my service to your
pretty wife. Handsomer every day! Better too, if possible! And
younger,' mused the speaker, in a low voice; 'that's the Devil of
it!'

'I should be astonished at your paying compliments, Mr. Tackleton,'
said Dot, not with the best grace in the world; 'but for your
condition.'

'You know all about it then?'

'I have got myself to believe it, somehow,' said Dot.

'After a hard struggle, I suppose?'

'Very.'

Tackleton the Toy-merchant, pretty generally known as Gruff and
Tackleton - for that was the firm, though Gruff had been bought out
long ago; only leaving his name, and as some said his nature,
according to its Dictionary meaning, in the business - Tackleton
the Toy-merchant, was a man whose vocation had been quite
misunderstood by his Parents and Guardians. If they had made him a
Money Lender, or a sharp Attorney, or a Sheriff's Officer, or a
Broker, he might have sown his discontented oats in his youth, and,
after having had the full run of himself in ill-natured
transactions, might have turned out amiable, at last, for the sake
of a little freshness and novelty. But, cramped and chafing in the
peaceable pursuit of toy-making, he was a domestic Ogre, who had
been living on children all his life, and was their implacable
enemy. He despised all toys; wouldn't have bought one for the
world; delighted, in his malice, to insinuate grim expressions into
the faces of brown-paper farmers who drove pigs to market, bellmen
who advertised lost lawyers' consciences, movable old ladies who
darned stockings or carved pies; and other like samples of his
stock in trade. In appalling masks; hideous, hairy, red-eyed Jacks
in Boxes; Vampire Kites; demoniacal Tumblers who wouldn't lie down,
and were perpetually flying forward, to stare infants out of
countenance; his soul perfectly revelled. They were his only
relief, and safety-valve. He was great in such inventions.
Anything suggestive of a Pony-nightmare was delicious to him. He
had even lost money (and he took to that toy very kindly) by
getting up Goblin slides for magic-lanterns, whereon the Powers of
Darkness were depicted as a sort of supernatural shell-fish, with
human faces. In intensifying the portraiture of Giants, he had
sunk quite a little capital; and, though no painter himself, he
could indicate, for the instruction of his artists, with a piece of
chalk, a certain furtive leer for the countenances of those
monsters, which was safe to destroy the peace of mind of any young
gentleman between the ages of six and eleven, for the whole
Christmas or Midsummer Vacation.

What he was in toys, he was (as most men are) in other things. You
may easily suppose, therefore, that within the great green cape,
which reached down to the calves of his legs, there was buttoned up
to the chin an uncommonly pleasant fellow; and that he was about as
choice a spirit, and as agreeable a companion, as ever stood in a
pair of bull-headed-looking boots with mahogany-coloured tops.

Still, Tackleton, the toy-merchant, was going to be married. In
spite of all this, he was going to be married. And to a young wife
too, a beautiful young wife.

He didn't look much like a bridegroom, as he stood in the Carrier's
kitchen, with a twist in his dry face, and a screw in his body, and
his hat jerked over the bridge of his nose, and his hands tucked
down into the bottoms of his pockets, and his whole sarcastic ill-
conditioned self peering out of one little corner of one little
eye, like the concentrated essence of any number of ravens. But, a
Bridegroom he designed to be.

'In three days' time. Next Thursday. The last day of the first
month in the year. That's my wedding-day,' said Tackleton.

Did I mention that he had always one eye wide open, and one eye
nearly shut; and that the one eye nearly shut, was always the
expressive eye? I don't think I did.

The indignation of Dot at this presumptuous assertion is not to be
described. What next? His imagination would compass the
possibility of just such another Baby, perhaps. The man was mad.

'I say! A word with you,' murmured Tackleton, nudging the Carrier
with his elbow, and taking him a little apart. 'You'll come to the
wedding? We're in the same boat, you know.'

'How in the same boat?' inquired the Carrier.

'A little disparity, you know,' said Tackleton, with another nudge.
'Come and spend an evening with us, beforehand.'

'Why?' demanded John, astonished at this pressing hospitality.

'Why?' returned the other. 'That's a new way of receiving an
invitation. Why, for pleasure - sociability, you know, and all
that!'

'I thought you were never sociable,' said John, in his plain way.

'Tchah! It's of no use to be anything but free with you, I see,'
said Tackleton. 'Why, then, the truth is you have a - what tea-
drinking people call a sort of a comfortable appearance together,
you and your wife. We know better, you know, but - '

'Well! We DON'T know better, then,' said Tackleton. 'We'll agree
that we don't. As you like; what does it matter? I was going to
say, as you have that sort of appearance, your company will produce
a favourable effect on Mrs. Tackleton that will be. And, though I
don't think your good lady's very friendly to me, in this matter,
still she can't help herself from falling into my views, for
there's a compactness and cosiness of appearance about her that
always tells, even in an indifferent case. You'll say you'll
come?'

'We have arranged to keep our Wedding-Day (as far as that goes) at
home,' said John. 'We have made the promise to ourselves these six
months. We think, you see, that home - '

'Bah! what's home?' cried Tackleton. 'Four walls and a ceiling!
(why don't you kill that Cricket? I would! I always do. I hate
their noise.) There are four walls and a ceiling at my house.
Come to me!'

'You kill your Crickets, eh?' said John.

'Scrunch 'em, sir,' returned the other, setting his heel heavily on
the floor. 'You'll say you'll come? it's as much your interest as
mine, you know, that the women should persuade each other that
they're quiet and contented, and couldn't be better off. I know
their way. Whatever one woman says, another woman is determined to
clinch, always. There's that spirit of emulation among 'em, sir,
that if your wife says to my wife, "I'm the happiest woman in the
world, and mine's the best husband in the world, and I dote on
him," my wife will say the same to yours, or more, and half believe
it.'

'Do you mean to say she don't, then?' asked the Carrier.

'Don't!' cried Tackleton, with a short, sharp laugh. 'Don't what?'

The Carrier had some faint idea of adding, 'dote upon you.' But,
happening to meet the half-closed eye, as it twinkled upon him over
the turned-up collar of the cape, which was within an ace of poking
it out, he felt it such an unlikely part and parcel of anything to
be doted on, that he substituted, 'that she don't believe it?'

'Ah you dog! You're joking,' said Tackleton.

But the Carrier, though slow to understand the full drift of his
meaning, eyed him in such a serious manner, that he was obliged to
be a little more explanatory.

'I have the humour,' said Tackleton: holding up the fingers of his
left hand, and tapping the forefinger, to imply 'there I am,
Tackleton to wit:' 'I have the humour, sir, to marry a young wife,
and a pretty wife:' here he rapped his little finger, to express
the Bride; not sparingly, but sharply; with a sense of power. 'I'm
able to gratify that humour and I do. It's my whim. But - now
look there!'

He pointed to where Dot was sitting, thoughtfully, before the fire;
leaning her dimpled chin upon her hand, and watching the bright
blaze. The Carrier looked at her, and then at him, and then at
her, and then at him again.

'She honours and obeys, no doubt, you know,' said Tackleton; 'and
that, as I am not a man of sentiment, is quite enough for ME. But
do you think there's anything more in it?'

'I think,' observed the Carrier, 'that I should chuck any man out
of window, who said there wasn't.'

'Exactly so,' returned the other with an unusual alacrity of
assent. 'To be sure! Doubtless you would. Of course. I'm
certain of it. Good night. Pleasant dreams!'

The Carrier was puzzled, and made uncomfortable and uncertain, in
spite of himself. He couldn't help showing it, in his manner.

'Good night, my dear friend!' said Tackleton, compassionately.
'I'm off. We're exactly alike, in reality, I see. You won't give
us to-morrow evening? Well! Next day you go out visiting, I know.
I'll meet you there, and bring my wife that is to be. It'll do her
good. You're agreeable? Thank'ee. What's that!'

It was a loud cry from the Carrier's wife: a loud, sharp, sudden
cry, that made the room ring, like a glass vessel. She had risen
from her seat, and stood like one transfixed by terror and
surprise. The Stranger had advanced towards the fire to warm
himself, and stood within a short stride of her chair. But quite
still.

'Dot!' cried the Carrier. 'Mary! Darling! What's the matter?'

They were all about her in a moment. Caleb, who had been dozing on
the cake-box, in the first imperfect recovery of his suspended
presence of mind, seized Miss Slowboy by the hair of her head, but
immediately apologised.

'Mary!' exclaimed the Carrier, supporting her in his arms. 'Are
you ill! What is it? Tell me, dear!'

She only answered by beating her hands together, and falling into a
wild fit of laughter. Then, sinking from his grasp upon the
ground, she covered her face with her apron, and wept bitterly.
And then she laughed again, and then she cried again, and then she
said how cold it was, and suffered him to lead her to the fire,
where she sat down as before. The old man standing, as before,
quite still.

'I'm better, John,' she said. 'I'm quite well now - I -'

'John!' But John was on the other side of her. Why turn her face
towards the strange old gentleman, as if addressing him! Was her
brain wandering?

'Only a fancy, John dear - a kind of shock - a something coming
suddenly before my eyes - I don't know what it was. It's quite
gone, quite gone.'

'I'm glad it's gone,' muttered Tackleton, turning the expressive
eye all round the room. 'I wonder where it's gone, and what it
was. Humph! Caleb, come here! Who's that with the grey hair?'

'I don't know, sir,' returned Caleb in a whisper. 'Never see him
before, in all my life. A beautiful figure for a nut-cracker;
quite a new model. With a screw-jaw opening down into his
waistcoat, he'd be lovely.'

'Not ugly enough,' said Tackleton.

'Or for a firebox, either,' observed Caleb, in deep contemplation,
'what a model! Unscrew his head to put the matches in; turn him
heels up'ards for the light; and what a firebox for a gentleman's
mantel-shelf, just as he stands!'

'Not half ugly enough,' said Tackleton. 'Nothing in him at all!
Come! Bring that box! All right now, I hope?'

'Good night,' said Tackleton. 'Good night, John Peerybingle! Take
care how you carry that box, Caleb. Let it fall, and I'll murder
you! Dark as pitch, and weather worse than ever, eh? Good night!'

So, with another sharp look round the room, he went out at the
door; followed by Caleb with the wedding-cake on his head.

The Carrier had been so much astounded by his little wife, and so
busily engaged in soothing and tending her, that he had scarcely
been conscious of the Stranger's presence, until now, when he again
stood there, their only guest.

'He don't belong to them, you see,' said John. 'I must give him a
hint to go.'

'I beg your pardon, friend,' said the old gentleman, advancing to
him; 'the more so, as I fear your wife has not been well; but the
Attendant whom my infirmity,' he touched his ears and shook his
head, 'renders almost indispensable, not having arrived, I fear
there must be some mistake. The bad night which made the shelter
of your comfortable cart (may I never have a worse!) so acceptable,
is still as bad as ever. Would you, in your kindness, suffer me to
rent a bed here?'

'Yes, yes,' cried Dot. 'Yes! Certainly!'

'Oh!' said the Carrier, surprised by the rapidity of this consent.

'Well! I don't object; but, still I'm not quite sure that - '

'Hush!' she interrupted. 'Dear John!'

'Why, he's stone deaf,' urged John.

'I know he is, but - Yes, sir, certainly. Yes! certainly! I'll
make him up a bed, directly, John.'

As she hurried off to do it, the flutter of her spirits, and the
agitation of her manner, were so strange that the Carrier stood
looking after her, quite confounded.

'Did its mothers make it up a Beds then!' cried Miss Slowboy to the
Baby; 'and did its hair grow brown and curly, when its caps was
lifted off, and frighten it, a precious Pets, a-sitting by the
fires!'

With that unaccountable attraction of the mind to trifles, which is
often incidental to a state of doubt and confusion, the Carrier as
he walked slowly to and fro, found himself mentally repeating even
these absurd words, many times. So many times that he got them by
heart, and was still conning them over and over, like a lesson,
when Tilly, after administering as much friction to the little bald
head with her hand as she thought wholesome (according to the
practice of nurses), had once more tied the Baby's cap on.

'And frighten it, a precious Pets, a-sitting by the fires. What
frightened Dot, I wonder!' mused the Carrier, pacing to and fro.

He scouted, from his heart, the insinuations of the Toy-merchant,
and yet they filled him with a vague, indefinite uneasiness. For,
Tackleton was quick and sly; and he had that painful sense,
himself, of being of slow perception, that a broken hint was always
worrying to him. He certainly had no intention in his mind of
linking anything that Tackleton had said, with the unusual conduct
of his wife, but the two subjects of reflection came into his mind
together, and he could not keep them asunder.

The bed was soon made ready; and the visitor, declining all
refreshment but a cup of tea, retired. Then, Dot - quite well
again, she said, quite well again - arranged the great chair in the
chimney-corner for her husband; filled his pipe and gave it him;
and took her usual little stool beside him on the hearth.

She always WOULD sit on that little stool. I think she must have
had a kind of notion that it was a coaxing, wheedling little stool.

She was, out and out, the very best filler of a pipe, I should say,
in the four quarters of the globe. To see her put that chubby
little finger in the bowl, and then blow down the pipe to clear the
tube, and, when she had done so, affect to think that there was
really something in the tube, and blow a dozen times, and hold it
to her eye like a telescope, with a most provoking twist in her
capital little face, as she looked down it, was quite a brilliant
thing. As to the tobacco, she was perfect mistress of the subject;
and her lighting of the pipe, with a wisp of paper, when the
Carrier had it in his mouth - going so very near his nose, and yet
not scorching it - was Art, high Art.

And the Cricket and the kettle, turning up again, acknowledged it!
The bright fire, blazing up again, acknowledged it! The little
Mower on the clock, in his unheeded work, acknowledged it! The
Carrier, in his smoothing forehead and expanding face, acknowledged
it, the readiest of all.

And as he soberly and thoughtfully puffed at his old pipe, and as
the Dutch clock ticked, and as the red fire gleamed, and as the
Cricket chirped; that Genius of his Hearth and Home (for such the
Cricket was) came out, in fairy shape, into the room, and summoned
many forms of Home about him. Dots of all ages, and all sizes,
filled the chamber. Dots who were merry children, running on
before him gathering flowers, in the fields; coy Dots, half
shrinking from, half yielding to, the pleading of his own rough
image; newly-married Dots, alighting at the door, and taking
wondering possession of the household keys; motherly little Dots,
attended by fictitious Slowboys, bearing babies to be christened;
matronly Dots, still young and blooming, watching Dots of
daughters, as they danced at rustic balls; fat Dots, encircled and
beset by troops of rosy grandchildren; withered Dots, who leaned on
sticks, and tottered as they crept along. Old Carriers too,
appeared, with blind old Boxers lying at their feet; and newer
carts with younger drivers ('Peerybingle Brothers' on the tilt);
and sick old Carriers, tended by the gentlest hands; and graves of
dead and gone old Carriers, green in the churchyard. And as the
Cricket showed him all these things - he saw them plainly, though
his eyes were fixed upon the fire - the Carrier's heart grew light
and happy, and he thanked his Household Gods with all his might,
and cared no more for Gruff and Tackleton than you do.

But, what was that young figure of a man, which the same Fairy
Cricket set so near Her stool, and which remained there, singly and
alone? Why did it linger still, so near her, with its arm upon the
chimney-piece, ever repeating 'Married! and not to me!'

O Dot! O failing Dot! There is no place for it in all your
husband's visions; why has its shadow fallen on his hearth!

CALEB PLUMMER and his Blind Daughter lived all alone by themselves,
as the Story-books say - and my blessing, with yours to back it I
hope, on the Story-books, for saying anything in this workaday
world! - Caleb Plummer and his Blind Daughter lived all alone by
themselves, in a little cracked nutshell of a wooden house, which
was, in truth, no better than a pimple on the prominent red-brick
nose of Gruff and Tackleton. The premises of Gruff and Tackleton
were the great feature of the street; but you might have knocked
down Caleb Plummer's dwelling with a hammer or two, and carried off
the pieces in a cart.

If any one had done the dwelling-house of Caleb Plummer the honour
to miss it after such an inroad, it would have been, no doubt, to
commend its demolition as a vast improvement. It stuck to the
premises of Gruff and Tackleton, like a barnacle to a ship's keel,
or a snail to a door, or a little bunch of toadstools to the stem
of a tree.

But, it was the germ from which the full-grown trunk of Gruff and
Tackleton had sprung; and, under its crazy roof, the Gruff before
last, had, in a small way, made toys for a generation of old boys
and girls, who had played with them, and found them out, and broken
them, and gone to sleep.

I have said that Caleb and his poor Blind Daughter lived here. I
should have said that Caleb lived here, and his poor Blind Daughter
somewhere else - in an enchanted home of Caleb's furnishing, where
scarcity and shabbiness were not, and trouble never entered. Caleb
was no sorcerer, but in the only magic art that still remains to
us, the magic of devoted, deathless love, Nature had been the
mistress of his study; and from her teaching, all the wonder came.

The Blind Girl never knew that ceilings were discoloured, walls
blotched and bare of plaster here and there, high crevices
unstopped and widening every day, beams mouldering and tending
downward. The Blind Girl never knew that iron was rusting, wood
rotting, paper peeling off; the size, and shape, and true
proportion of the dwelling, withering away. The Blind Girl never
knew that ugly shapes of delf and earthenware were on the board;
that sorrow and faintheartedness were in the house; that Caleb's
scanty hairs were turning greyer and more grey, before her
sightless face. The Blind Girl never knew they had a master, cold,
exacting, and uninterested - never knew that Tackleton was
Tackleton in short; but lived in the belief of an eccentric
humourist who loved to have his jest with them, and who, while he
was the Guardian Angel of their lives, disdained to hear one word
of thankfulness.

And all was Caleb's doing; all the doing of her simple father! But
he too had a Cricket on his Hearth; and listening sadly to its
music when the motherless Blind Child was very young, that Spirit
had inspired him with the thought that even her great deprivation
might be almost changed into a blessing, and the girl made happy by
these little means. For all the Cricket tribe are potent Spirits,
even though the people who hold converse with them do not know it
(which is frequently the case); and there are not in the unseen
world, voices more gentle and more true, that may be so implicitly
relied on, or that are so certain to give none but tenderest
counsel, as the Voices in which the Spirits of the Fireside and the
Hearth address themselves to human kind.

Caleb and his daughter were at work together in their usual
working-room, which served them for their ordinary living-room as
well; and a strange place it was. There were houses in it,
finished and unfinished, for Dolls of all stations in life.
Suburban tenements for Dolls of moderate means; kitchens and single
apartments for Dolls of the lower classes; capital town residences
for Dolls of high estate. Some of these establishments were
already furnished according to estimate, with a view to the
convenience of Dolls of limited income; others could be fitted on
the most expensive scale, at a moment's notice, from whole shelves
of chairs and tables, sofas, bedsteads, and upholstery. The
nobility and gentry, and public in general, for whose accommodation
these tenements were designed, lay, here and there, in baskets,
staring straight up at the ceiling; but, in denoting their degrees
in society, and confining them to their respective stations (which
experience shows to be lamentably difficult in real life), the
makers of these Dolls had far improved on Nature, who is often
froward and perverse; for, they, not resting on such arbitrary
marks as satin, cotton-print, and bits of rag, had superadded
striking personal differences which allowed of no mistake. Thus,
the Doll-lady of distinction had wax limbs of perfect symmetry; but
only she and her compeers. The next grade in the social scale
being made of leather, and the next of coarse linen stuff. As to
the common-people, they had just so many matches out of tinder-
boxes, for their arms and legs, and there they were - established
in their sphere at once, beyond the possibility of getting out of
it.

There were various other samples of his handicraft, besides Dolls,
in Caleb Plummer's room. There were Noah's Arks, in which the
Birds and Beasts were an uncommonly tight fit, I assure you; though
they could be crammed in, anyhow, at the roof, and rattled and
shaken into the smallest compass. By a bold poetical licence, most
of these Noah's Arks had knockers on the doors; inconsistent
appendages, perhaps, as suggestive of morning callers and a
Postman, yet a pleasant finish to the outside of the building.
There were scores of melancholy little carts, which, when the
wheels went round, performed most doleful music. Many small
fiddles, drums, and other instruments of torture; no end of cannon,
shields, swords, spears, and guns. There were little tumblers in
red breeches, incessantly swarming up high obstacles of red-tape,
and coming down, head first, on the other side; and there were
innumerable old gentlemen of respectable, not to say venerable,
appearance, insanely flying over horizontal pegs, inserted, for the
purpose, in their own street doors. There were beasts of all
sorts; horses, in particular, of every breed, from the spotted
barrel on four pegs, with a small tippet for a mane, to the
thoroughbred rocker on his highest mettle. As it would have been
hard to count the dozens upon dozens of grotesque figures that were
ever ready to commit all sorts of absurdities on the turning of a
handle, so it would have been no easy task to mention any human
folly, vice, or weakness, that had not its type, immediate or
remote, in Caleb Plummer's room. And not in an exaggerated form,
for very little handles will move men and women to as strange
performances, as any Toy was ever made to undertake.

In the midst of all these objects, Caleb and his daughter sat at
work. The Blind Girl busy as a Doll's dressmaker; Caleb painting
and glazing the four-pair front of a desirable family mansion.

The care imprinted in the lines of Caleb's face, and his absorbed
and dreamy manner, which would have sat well on some alchemist or
abstruse student, were at first sight an odd contrast to his
occupation, and the trivialities about him. But, trivial things,
invented and pursued for bread, become very serious matters of
fact; and, apart from this consideration, I am not at all prepared
to say, myself, that if Caleb had been a Lord Chamberlain, or a
Member of Parliament, or a lawyer, or even a great speculator, he
would have dealt in toys one whit less whimsical, while I have a
very great doubt whether they would have been as harmless.

'So you were out in the rain last night, father, in your beautiful
new great-coat,' said Caleb's daughter.

'In my beautiful new great-coat,' answered Caleb, glancing towards
a clothes-line in the room, on which the sack-cloth garment
previously described, was carefully hung up to dry.

'How glad I am you bought it, father!'

'And of such a tailor, too,' said Caleb. 'Quite a fashionable
tailor. It's too good for me.'

The Blind Girl rested from her work, and laughed with delight.

'Too good, father! What can be too good for you?'

'I'm half-ashamed to wear it though,' said Caleb, watching the
effect of what he said, upon her brightening face; 'upon my word!
When I hear the boys and people say behind me, "Hal-loa! Here's a
swell!" I don't know which way to look. And when the beggar
wouldn't go away last night; and when I said I was a very common
man, said "No, your Honour! Bless your Honour, don't say that!" I
was quite ashamed. I really felt as if I hadn't a right to wear
it.'

Happy Blind Girl! How merry she was, in her exultation!

'I see you, father,' she said, clasping her hands, 'as plainly, as
if I had the eyes I never want when you are with me. A blue coat -
'

'Bright blue,' said Caleb.

'Yes, yes! Bright blue!' exclaimed the girl, turning up her
radiant face; 'the colour I can just remember in the blessed sky!
You told me it was blue before! A bright blue coat - '

How different the picture in her mind, from Caleb, as he sat
observing her! She had spoken of his free step. She was right in
that. For years and years, he had never once crossed that
threshold at his own slow pace, but with a footfall counterfeited
for her ear; and never had he, when his heart was heaviest,
forgotten the light tread that was to render hers so cheerful and
courageous!

Heaven knows! But I think Caleb's vague bewilderment of manner may
have half originated in his having confused himself about himself
and everything around him, for the love of his Blind Daughter. How
could the little man be otherwise than bewildered, after labouring
for so many years to destroy his own identity, and that of all the
objects that had any bearing on it!

'There we are,' said Caleb, falling back a pace or two to form the
better judgment of his work; 'as near the real thing as
sixpenn'orth of halfpence is to sixpence. What a pity that the
whole front of the house opens at once! If there was only a
staircase in it, now, and regular doors to the rooms to go in at!
But that's the worst of my calling, I'm always deluding myself, and
swindling myself.'

'You are speaking quite softly. You are not tired, father?'

'Tired!' echoed Caleb, with a great burst of animation, 'what
should tire me, Bertha? I was never tired. What does it mean?'

To give the greater force to his words, he checked himself in an
involuntary imitation of two half-length stretching and yawning
figures on the mantel-shelf, who were represented as in one eternal
state of weariness from the waist upwards; and hummed a fragment of
a song. It was a Bacchanalian song, something about a Sparkling
Bowl. He sang it with an assumption of a Devil-may-care voice,
that made his face a thousand times more meagre and more thoughtful
than ever.

'What! You're singing, are you?' said Tackleton, putting his head
in at the door. 'Go it! I can't sing.'

Nobody would have suspected him of it. He hadn't what is generally
termed a singing face, by any means.

'I can't afford to sing,' said Tackleton. 'I'm glad YOU CAN. I
hope you can afford to work too. Hardly time for both, I should
think?'

'If you could only see him, Bertha, how he's winking at me!'
whispered Caleb. 'Such a man to joke! you'd think, if you didn't
know him, he was in earnest - wouldn't you now?'

The Blind Girl smiled and nodded.

'The bird that can sing and won't sing, must be made to sing, they
say,' grumbled Tackleton. 'What about the owl that can't sing, and
oughtn't to sing, and will sing; is there anything that HE should
be made to do?'

'The extent to which he's winking at this moment!' whispered Caleb
to his daughter. 'O, my gracious!'

'Always merry and light-hearted with us!' cried the smiling Bertha.

'O, you're there, are you?' answered Tackleton. 'Poor Idiot!'

He really did believe she was an Idiot; and he founded the belief,
I can't say whether consciously or not, upon her being fond of him.

'Well! and being there, - how are you?' said Tackleton, in his
grudging way.

'Oh! well; quite well. And as happy as even you can wish me to be.
As happy as you would make the whole world, if you could!'

'Poor Idiot!' muttered Tackleton. 'No gleam of reason. Not a
gleam!'

The Blind Girl took his hand and kissed it; held it for a moment in
her own two hands; and laid her cheek against it tenderly, before
releasing it. There was such unspeakable affection and such
fervent gratitude in the act, that Tackleton himself was moved to
say, in a milder growl than usual:

'What's the matter now?'

'I stood it close beside my pillow when I went to sleep last night,
and remembered it in my dreams. And when the day broke, and the
glorious red sun - the RED sun, father?'

'Red in the mornings and the evenings, Bertha,' said poor Caleb,
with a woeful glance at his employer.

'When it rose, and the bright light I almost fear to strike myself
against in walking, came into the room, I turned the little tree
towards it, and blessed Heaven for making things so precious, and
blessed you for sending them to cheer me!'

'Bedlam broke loose!' said Tackleton under his breath. 'We shall
arrive at the strait-waistcoat and mufflers soon. We're getting
on!'

Caleb, with his hands hooked loosely in each other, stared vacantly
before him while his daughter spoke, as if he really were uncertain
(I believe he was) whether Tackleton had done anything to deserve
her thanks, or not. If he could have been a perfectly free agent,
at that moment, required, on pain of death, to kick the Toy-
merchant, or fall at his feet, according to his merits, I believe
it would have been an even chance which course he would have taken.
Yet, Caleb knew that with his own hands he had brought the little
rose-tree home for her, so carefully, and that with his own lips he
had forged the innocent deception which should help to keep her
from suspecting how much, how very much, he every day, denied
himself, that she might be the happier.

'Bertha!' said Tackleton, assuming, for the nonce, a little
cordiality. 'Come here.'

'Oh! I can come straight to you! You needn't guide me!' she
rejoined.

'Shall I tell you a secret, Bertha?'

'If you will!' she answered, eagerly.

How bright the darkened face! How adorned with light, the
listening head!

'This is the day on which little what's-her-name, the spoilt child,
Peerybingle's wife, pays her regular visit to you - makes her
fantastic Pic-Nic here; an't it?' said Tackleton, with a strong
expression of distaste for the whole concern.

'Yes,' replied Bertha. 'This is the day.'

'I thought so,' said Tackleton. 'I should like to join the party.'

'Do you hear that, father!' cried the Blind Girl in an ecstasy.

'Yes, yes, I hear it,' murmured Caleb, with the fixed look of a
sleep-walker; 'but I don't believe it. It's one of my lies, I've
no doubt.'

'You see I - I want to bring the Peerybingles a little more into
company with May Fielding,' said Tackleton. 'I am going to be
married to May.'

'Married!' cried the Blind Girl, starting from him.

'She's such a con-founded Idiot,' muttered Tackleton, 'that I was
afraid she'd never comprehend me. Ah, Bertha! Married! Church,
parson, clerk, beadle, glass-coach, bells, breakfast, bride-cake,
favours, marrow-bones, cleavers, and all the rest of the
tomfoolery. A wedding, you know; a wedding. Don't you know what a
wedding is?'

'I know,' replied the Blind Girl, in a gentle tone. 'I
understand!'

'Do you?' muttered Tackleton. 'It's more than I expected. Well!
On that account I want to join the party, and to bring May and her
mother. I'll send in a little something or other, before the
afternoon. A cold leg of mutton, or some comfortable trifle of
that sort. You'll expect me?'

'Yes,' she answered.

She had drooped her head, and turned away; and so stood, with her
hands crossed, musing.

'I don't think you will,' muttered Tackleton, looking at her; 'for
you seem to have forgotten all about it, already. Caleb!'

'I may venture to say I'm here, I suppose,' thought Caleb. 'Sir!'

'Take care she don't forget what I've been saying to her.'

'SHE never forgets,' returned Caleb. 'It's one of the few things
she an't clever in.'

'Every man thinks his own geese swans,' observed the Toy-merchant,
with a shrug. 'Poor devil!'

Having delivered himself of which remark, with infinite contempt,
old Gruff and Tackleton withdrew.

Bertha remained where he had left her, lost in meditation. The
gaiety had vanished from her downcast face, and it was very sad.
Three or four times she shook her head, as if bewailing some
remembrance or some loss; but her sorrowful reflections found no
vent in words.

It was not until Caleb had been occupied, some time, in yoking a
team of horses to a waggon by the summary process of nailing the
harness to the vital parts of their bodies, that she drew near to
his working-stool, and sitting down beside him, said:

'Here they are,' said Caleb. 'Always ready. They are more yours
than mine, Bertha, any hour in the four-and-twenty. What shall
your eyes do for you, dear?'

'Look round the room, father.'

'All right,' said Caleb. 'No sooner said than done, Bertha.'

'Tell me about it.'

'It's much the same as usual,' said Caleb. 'Homely, but very snug.
The gay colours on the walls; the bright flowers on the plates and
dishes; the shining wood, where there are beams or panels; the
general cheerfulness and neatness of the building; make it very
pretty.'

Cheerful and neat it was wherever Bertha's hands could busy
themselves. But nowhere else, were cheerfulness and neatness
possible, in the old crazy shed which Caleb's fancy so transformed.

'You have your working dress on, and are not so gallant as when you
wear the handsome coat?' said Bertha, touching him.

'Not quite so gallant,' answered Caleb. 'Pretty brisk though.'

'Father,' said the Blind Girl, drawing close to his side, and
stealing one arm round his neck, 'tell me something about May. She
is very fair?'

'She is indeed,' said Caleb. And she was indeed. It was quite a
rare thing to Caleb, not to have to draw on his invention.

'Her hair is dark,' said Bertha, pensively, 'darker than mine. Her
voice is sweet and musical, I know. I have often loved to hear it.
Her shape - '

'There's not a Doll's in all the room to equal it,' said Caleb.
'And her eyes! - '

He stopped; for Bertha had drawn closer round his neck, and from
the arm that clung about him, came a warning pressure which he
understood too well.

He coughed a moment, hammered for a moment, and then fell back upon
the song about the sparkling bowl; his infallible resource in all
such difficulties.

'Our friend, father, our benefactor. I am never tired, you know,
of hearing about him. - Now, was I ever?' she said, hastily.

'Of course not,' answered Caleb, 'and with reason.'

'Ah! With how much reason!' cried the Blind Girl. With such
fervency, that Caleb, though his motives were so pure, could not
endure to meet her face; but dropped his eyes, as if she could have
read in them his innocent deceit.

'Then, tell me again about him, dear father,' said Bertha. 'Many
times again! His face is benevolent, kind, and tender. Honest and
true, I am sure it is. The manly heart that tries to cloak all
favours with a show of roughness and unwillingness, beats in its
every look and glance.'

'Ye-es,' said Caleb, reluctantly. 'He's a little older than May.
But that don't signify.'

'Oh father, yes! To be his patient companion in infirmity and age;
to be his gentle nurse in sickness, and his constant friend in
suffering and sorrow; to know no weariness in working for his sake;
to watch him, tend him, sit beside his bed and talk to him awake,
and pray for him asleep; what privileges these would be! What
opportunities for proving all her truth and devotion to him! Would
she do all this, dear father?

'No doubt of it,' said Caleb.

'I love her, father; I can love her from my soul!' exclaimed the
Blind Girl. And saying so, she laid her poor blind face on Caleb's
shoulder, and so wept and wept, that he was almost sorry to have
brought that tearful happiness upon her.

In the mean time, there had been a pretty sharp commotion at John
Peerybingle's, for little Mrs. Peerybingle naturally couldn't think
of going anywhere without the Baby; and to get the Baby under weigh
took time. Not that there was much of the Baby, speaking of it as
a thing of weight and measure, but there was a vast deal to do
about and about it, and it all had to be done by easy stages. For
instance, when the Baby was got, by hook and by crook, to a certain
point of dressing, and you might have rationally supposed that
another touch or two would finish him off, and turn him out a tip-
top Baby challenging the world, he was unexpectedly extinguished in
a flannel cap, and hustled off to bed; where he simmered (so to
speak) between two blankets for the best part of an hour. From
this state of inaction he was then recalled, shining very much and
roaring violently, to partake of - well? I would rather say, if
you'll permit me to speak generally - of a slight repast. After
which, he went to sleep again. Mrs. Peerybingle took advantage of
this interval, to make herself as smart in a small way as ever you
saw anybody in all your life; and, during the same short truce,
Miss Slowboy insinuated herself into a spencer of a fashion so
surprising and ingenious, that it had no connection with herself,
or anything else in the universe, but was a shrunken, dog's-eared,
independent fact, pursuing its lonely course without the least
regard to anybody. By this time, the Baby, being all alive again,
was invested, by the united efforts of Mrs. Peerybingle and Miss
Slowboy, with a cream-coloured mantle for its body, and a sort of
nankeen raised-pie for its head; and so in course of time they all
three got down to the door, where the old horse had already taken
more than the full value of his day's toll out of the Turnpike
Trust, by tearing up the road with his impatient autographs; and
whence Boxer might be dimly seen in the remote perspective,
standing looking back, and tempting him to come on without orders.

As to a chair, or anything of that kind for helping Mrs.
Peerybingle into the cart, you know very little of John, if you
think THAT was necessary. Before you could have seen him lift her
from the ground, there she was in her place, fresh and rosy,
saying, 'John! How CAN you! Think of Tilly!'

If I might be allowed to mention a young lady's legs, on any terms,
I would observe of Miss Slowboy's that there was a fatality about
them which rendered them singularly liable to be grazed; and that
she never effected the smallest ascent or descent, without
recording the circumstance upon them with a notch, as Robinson
Crusoe marked the days upon his wooden calendar. But as this might
be considered ungenteel, I'll think of it.

'John? You've got the Basket with the Veal and Ham-Pie and things,
and the bottles of Beer?' said Dot. 'If you haven't, you must turn
round again, this very minute.'

'You're a nice little article,' returned the Carrier, 'to be
talking about turning round, after keeping me a full quarter of an
hour behind my time.'

'I am sorry for it, John,' said Dot in a great bustle, 'but I
really could not think of going to Bertha's - I would not do it,
John, on any account - without the Veal and Ham-Pie and things, and
the bottles of Beer. Way!'

This monosyllable was addressed to the horse, who didn't mind it at
all.

'Oh DO way, John!' said Mrs. Peerybingle. 'Please!'

'It'll be time enough to do that,' returned John, 'when I begin to
leave things behind me. The basket's here, safe enough.'

'What a hard-hearted monster you must be, John, not to have said
so, at once, and save me such a turn! I declared I wouldn't go to
Bertha's without the Veal and Ham-Pie and things, and the bottles
of Beer, for any money. Regularly once a fortnight ever since we
have been married, John, have we made our little Pic-Nic there. If
anything was to go wrong with it, I should almost think we were
never to be lucky again.'

'It was a kind thought in the first instance,' said the Carrier:
'and I honour you for it, little woman.'

'He's an odd fish,' said the Carrier, looking straight along the
road before them. 'I can't make him out. I don't believe there's
any harm in him.'

'None at all. I'm - I'm sure there's none at all.'

'Yes,' said the Carrier, with his eyes attracted to her face by the
great earnestness of her manner. 'I am glad you feel so certain of
it, because it's a confirmation to me. It's curious that he should
have taken it into his head to ask leave to go on lodging with us;
an't it? Things come about so strangely.'

'So very strangely,' she rejoined in a low voice, scarcely audible.

'However, he's a good-natured old gentleman,' said John, 'and pays
as a gentleman, and I think his word is to be relied upon, like a
gentleman's. I had quite a long talk with him this morning: he
can hear me better already, he says, as he gets more used to my
voice. He told me a great deal about himself, and I told him a
great deal about myself, and a rare lot of questions he asked me.
I gave him information about my having two beats, you know, in my
business; one day to the right from our house and back again;
another day to the left from our house and back again (for he's a
stranger and don't know the names of places about here); and he
seemed quite pleased. "Why, then I shall be returning home to-
night your way," he says, "when I thought you'd be coming in an
exactly opposite direction. That's capital! I may trouble you for
another lift perhaps, but I'll engage not to fall so sound asleep
again." He WAS sound asleep, sure-ly! - Dot! what are you thinking
of?'

'Thinking of, John? I - I was listening to you.'

'O! That's all right!' said the honest Carrier. 'I was afraid,
from the look of your face, that I had gone rambling on so long, as
to set you thinking about something else. I was very near it, I'll
be bound.'

Dot making no reply, they jogged on, for some little time, in
silence. But, it was not easy to remain silent very long in John
Peerybingle's cart, for everybody on the road had something to say.
Though it might only be 'How are you!' and indeed it was very often
nothing else, still, to give that back again in the right spirit of
cordiality, required, not merely a nod and a smile, but as
wholesome an action of the lungs withal, as a long-winded
Parliamentary speech. Sometimes, passengers on foot, or horseback,
plodded on a little way beside the cart, for the express purpose of
having a chat; and then there was a great deal to be said, on both
sides.

Then, Boxer gave occasion to more good-natured recognitions of, and
by, the Carrier, than half-a-dozen Christians could have done!
Everybody knew him, all along the road - especially the fowls and
pigs, who when they saw him approaching, with his body all on one
side, and his ears pricked up inquisitively, and that knob of a
tail making the most of itself in the air, immediately withdrew
into remote back settlements, without waiting for the honour of a
nearer acquaintance. He had business everywhere; going down all
the turnings, looking into all the wells, bolting in and out of all
the cottages, dashing into the midst of all the Dame-Schools,
fluttering all the pigeons, magnifying the tails of all the cats,
and trotting into the public-houses like a regular customer.
Wherever he went, somebody or other might have been heard to cry,
'Halloa! Here's Boxer!' and out came that somebody forthwith,
accompanied by at least two or three other somebodies, to give John
Peerybingle and his pretty wife, Good Day.

The packages and parcels for the errand cart, were numerous; and
there were many stoppages to take them in and give them out, which
were not by any means the worst parts of the journey. Some people
were so full of expectation about their parcels, and other people
were so full of wonder about their parcels, and other people were
so full of inexhaustible directions about their parcels, and John
had such a lively interest in all the parcels, that it was as good
as a play. Likewise, there were articles to carry, which required
to be considered and discussed, and in reference to the adjustment
and disposition of which, councils had to be holden by the Carrier
and the senders: at which Boxer usually assisted, in short fits of
the closest attention, and long fits of tearing round and round the
assembled sages and barking himself hoarse. Of all these little
incidents, Dot was the amused and open-eyed spectatress from her
chair in the cart; and as she sat there, looking on - a charming
little portrait framed to admiration by the tilt - there was no
lack of nudgings and glancings and whisperings and envyings among
the younger men. And this delighted John the Carrier, beyond
measure; for he was proud to have his little wife admired, knowing
that she didn't mind it - that, if anything, she rather liked it
perhaps.

The trip was a little foggy, to be sure, in the January weather;
and was raw and cold. But who cared for such trifles? Not Dot,
decidedly. Not Tilly Slowboy, for she deemed sitting in a cart, on
any terms, to be the highest point of human joys; the crowning
circumstance of earthly hopes. Not the Baby, I'll be sworn; for
it's not in Baby nature to be warmer or more sound asleep, though
its capacity is great in both respects, than that blessed young
Peerybingle was, all the way.

You couldn't see very far in the fog, of course; but you could see
a great deal! It's astonishing how much you may see, in a thicker
fog than that, if you will only take the trouble to look for it.
Why, even to sit watching for the Fairy-rings in the fields, and
for the patches of hoar-frost still lingering in the shade, near
hedges and by trees, was a pleasant occupation: to make no mention
of the unexpected shapes in which the trees themselves came
starting out of the mist, and glided into it again. The hedges
were tangled and bare, and waved a multitude of blighted garlands
in the wind; but there was no discouragement in this. It was
agreeable to contemplate; for it made the fireside warmer in
possession, and the summer greener in expectancy. The river looked
chilly; but it was in motion, and moving at a good pace - which was
a great point. The canal was rather slow and torpid; that must be
admitted. Never mind. It would freeze the sooner when the frost
set fairly in, and then there would be skating, and sliding; and
the heavy old barges, frozen up somewhere near a wharf, would smoke
their rusty iron chimney pipes all day, and have a lazy time of it.

In one place, there was a great mound of weeds or stubble burning;
and they watched the fire, so white in the daytime, flaring through
the fog, with only here and there a dash of red in it, until, in
consequence, as she observed, of the smoke 'getting up her nose,'
Miss Slowboy choked - she could do anything of that sort, on the
smallest provocation - and woke the Baby, who wouldn't go to sleep
again. But, Boxer, who was in advance some quarter of a mile or
so, had already passed the outposts of the town, and gained the
corner of the street where Caleb and his daughter lived; and long
before they had reached the door, he and the Blind Girl were on the
pavement waiting to receive them.

Boxer, by the way, made certain delicate distinctions of his own,
in his communication with Bertha, which persuade me fully that he
knew her to be blind. He never sought to attract her attention by
looking at her, as he often did with other people, but touched her
invariably. What experience he could ever have had of blind people
or blind dogs, I don't know. He had never lived with a blind
master; nor had Mr. Boxer the elder, nor Mrs. Boxer, nor any of his
respectable family on either side, ever been visited with
blindness, that I am aware of. He may have found it out for
himself, perhaps, but he had got hold of it somehow; and therefore
he had hold of Bertha too, by the skirt, and kept bold, until Mrs.
Peerybingle and the Baby, and Miss Slowboy, and the basket, were
all got safely within doors.

May Fielding was already come; and so was her mother - a little
querulous chip of an old lady with a peevish face, who, in right of
having preserved a waist like a bedpost, was supposed to be a most
transcendent figure; and who, in consequence of having once been
better off, or of labouring under an impression that she might have
been, if something had happened which never did happen, and seemed
to have never been particularly likely to come to pass - but it's
all the same - was very genteel and patronising indeed. Gruff and
Tackleton was also there, doing the agreeable, with the evident
sensation of being as perfectly at home, and as unquestionably in
his own element, as a fresh young salmon on the top of the Great
Pyramid.

'May! My dear old friend!' cried Dot, running up to meet her.
'What a happiness to see you.'

Her old friend was, to the full, as hearty and as glad as she; and
it really was, if you'll believe me, quite a pleasant sight to see
them embrace. Tackleton was a man of taste beyond all question.
May was very pretty.

You know sometimes, when you are used to a pretty face, how, when
it comes into contact and comparison with another pretty face, it
seems for the moment to be homely and faded, and hardly to deserve
the high opinion you have had of it. Now, this was not at all the
case, either with Dot or May; for May's face set off Dot's, and
Dot's face set off May's, so naturally and agreeably, that, as John
Peerybingle was very near saying when he came into the room, they
ought to have been born sisters - which was the only improvement
you could have suggested.

Tackleton had brought his leg of mutton, and, wonderful to relate,
a tart besides - but we don't mind a little dissipation when our
brides are in the case. we don't get married every day - and in
addition to these dainties, there were the Veal and Ham-Pie, and
'things,' as Mrs. Peerybingle called them; which were chiefly nuts
and oranges, and cakes, and such small deer. When the repast was
set forth on the board, flanked by Caleb's contribution, which was
a great wooden bowl of smoking potatoes (he was prohibited, by
solemn compact, from producing any other viands), Tackleton led his
intended mother-in-law to the post of honour. For the better
gracing of this place at the high festival, the majestic old soul
had adorned herself with a cap, calculated to inspire the
thoughtless with sentiments of awe. She also wore her gloves. But
let us be genteel, or die!

Caleb sat next his daughter; Dot and her old schoolfellow were side
by side; the good Carrier took care of the bottom of the table.
Miss Slowboy was isolated, for the time being, from every article
of furniture but the chair she sat on, that she might have nothing
else to knock the Baby's head against.

As Tilly stared about her at the dolls and toys, they stared at her
and at the company. The venerable old gentlemen at the street
doors (who were all in full action) showed especial interest in the
party, pausing occasionally before leaping, as if they were
listening to the conversation, and then plunging wildly over and
over, a great many times, without halting for breath - as in a
frantic state of delight with the whole proceedings.

Certainly, if these old gentlemen were inclined to have a fiendish
joy in the contemplation of Tackleton's discomfiture, they had good
reason to be satisfied. Tackleton couldn't get on at all; and the
more cheerful his intended bride became in Dot's society, the less
he liked it, though he had brought them together for that purpose.
For he was a regular dog in the manger, was Tackleton; and when
they laughed and he couldn't, he took it into his head,
immediately, that they must be laughing at him.

'Ah, May!' said Dot. 'Dear dear, what changes! To talk of those
merry school-days makes one young again.'

'Why, you an't particularly old, at any time; are you?' said
Tackleton.

'How many YOU'll add to May's, I am sure I don't know,' said Dot,
laughing. 'But she can't be much less than a hundred years of age
on her next birthday.'

'Ha ha!' laughed Tackleton. Hollow as a drum, that laugh though.
And he looked as if he could have twisted Dot's neck, comfortably.

'Dear dear!' said Dot. 'Only to remember how we used to talk, at
school, about the husbands we would choose. I don't know how
young, and how handsome, and how gay, and how lively, mine was not
to be! And as to May's! - Ah dear! I don't know whether to laugh
or cry, when I think what silly girls we were.'

May seemed to know which to do; for the colour flushed into her
face, and tears stood in her eyes.

'Even the very persons themselves - real live young men - were
fixed on sometimes,' said Dot. 'We little thought how things would
come about. I never fixed on John I'm sure; I never so much as
thought of him. And if I had told you, you were ever to be married
to Mr. Tackleton, why you'd have slapped me. Wouldn't you, May?'

Though May didn't say yes, she certainly didn't say no, or express
no, by any means.

Tackleton laughed - quite shouted, he laughed so loud. John
Peerybingle laughed too, in his ordinary good-natured and contented
manner; but his was a mere whisper of a laugh, to Tackleton's.

'You couldn't help yourselves, for all that. You couldn't resist
us, you see,' said Tackleton. 'Here we are! Here we are!'

'Where are your gay young bridegrooms now!'

'Some of them are dead,' said Dot; 'and some of them forgotten.
Some of them, if they could stand among us at this moment, would
not believe we were the same creatures; would not believe that what
they saw and heard was real, and we COULD forget them so. No! they
would not believe one word of it!'

'Why, Dot!' exclaimed the Carrier. 'Little woman!'

She had spoken with such earnestness and fire, that she stood in
need of some recalling to herself, without doubt. Her husband's
cheek was very gentle, for he merely interfered, as he supposed, to
shield old Tackleton; but it proved effectual, for she stopped, and
said no more. There was an uncommon agitation, even in her
silence, which the wary Tackleton, who had brought his half-shut
eye to bear upon her, noted closely, and remembered to some purpose
too.

May uttered no word, good or bad, but sat quite still, with her
eyes cast down, and made no sign of interest in what had passed.
The good lady her mother now interposed, observing, in the first
instance, that girls were girls, and byegones byegones, and that so
long as young people were young and thoughtless, they would
probably conduct themselves like young and thoughtless persons:
with two or three other positions of a no less sound and
incontrovertible character. She then remarked, in a devout spirit,
that she thanked Heaven she had always found in her daughter May, a
dutiful and obedient child; for which she took no credit to
herself, though she had every reason to believe it was entirely
owing to herself. With regard to Mr. Tackleton she said, That he
was in a moral point of view an undeniable individual, and That he
was in an eligible point of view a son-in-law to be desired, no one
in their senses could doubt. (She was very emphatic here.) With
regard to the family into which he was so soon about, after some
solicitation, to be admitted, she believed Mr. Tackleton knew that,
although reduced in purse, it had some pretensions to gentility;
and if certain circumstances, not wholly unconnected, she would go
so far as to say, with the Indigo Trade, but to which she would not
more particularly refer, had happened differently, it might perhaps
have been in possession of wealth. She then remarked that she
would not allude to the past, and would not mention that her
daughter had for some time rejected the suit of Mr. Tackleton; and
that she would not say a great many other things which she did say,
at great length. Finally, she delivered it as the general result
of her observation and experience, that those marriages in which
there was least of what was romantically and sillily called love,
were always the happiest; and that she anticipated the greatest
possible amount of bliss - not rapturous bliss; but the solid,
steady-going article - from the approaching nuptials. She
concluded by informing the company that to-morrow was the day she
had lived for, expressly; and that when it was over, she would
desire nothing better than to be packed up and disposed of, in any
genteel place of burial.

As these remarks were quite unanswerable - which is the happy
property of all remarks that are sufficiently wide of the purpose -
they changed the current of the conversation, and diverted the
general attention to the Veal and Ham-Pie, the cold mutton, the
potatoes, and the tart. In order that the bottled beer might not
be slighted, John Peerybingle proposed To-morrow: the Wedding-Day;
and called upon them to drink a bumper to it, before he proceeded
on his journey.

For you ought to know that he only rested there, and gave the old
horse a bait. He had to go some four of five miles farther on; and
when he returned in the evening, he called for Dot, and took
another rest on his way home. This was the order of the day on all
the Pic-Nic occasions, had been, ever since their institution.

There were two persons present, besides the bride and bridegroom
elect, who did but indifferent honour to the toast. One of these
was Dot, too flushed and discomposed to adapt herself to any small
occurrence of the moment; the other, Bertha, who rose up hurriedly,
before the rest, and left the table.

'Good bye!' said stout John Peerybingle, pulling on his dreadnought
coat. 'I shall be back at the old time. Good bye all!'

'Good bye, John,' returned Caleb.

He seemed to say it by rote, and to wave his hand in the same
unconscious manner; for he stood observing Bertha with an anxious
wondering face, that never altered its expression.

'Good bye, young shaver!' said the jolly Carrier, bending down to
kiss the child; which Tilly Slowboy, now intent upon her knife and
fork, had deposited asleep (and strange to say, without damage) in
a little cot of Bertha's furnishing; 'good bye! Time will come, I
suppose, when YOU'LL turn out into the cold, my little friend, and
leave your old father to enjoy his pipe and his rheumatics in the
chimney-corner; eh? Where's Dot?'

'I'm here, John!' she said, starting.

'Come, come!' returned the Carrier, clapping his sounding hands.
'Where's the pipe?'

'I quite forgot the pipe, John.'

Forgot the pipe! Was such a wonder ever heard of! She! Forgot
the pipe!

'I'll - I'll fill it directly. It's soon done.'

But it was not so soon done, either. It lay in the usual place -
the Carrier's dreadnought pocket - with the little pouch, her own
work, from which she was used to fill it, but her hand shook so,
that she entangled it (and yet her hand was small enough to have
come out easily, I am sure), and bungled terribly. The filling of
the pipe and lighting it, those little offices in which I have
commended her discretion, were vilely done, from first to last.
During the whole process, Tackleton stood looking on maliciously
with the half-closed eye; which, whenever it met hers - or caught
it, for it can hardly be said to have ever met another eye: rather
being a kind of trap to snatch it up - augmented her confusion in a
most remarkable degree.

'Why, what a clumsy Dot you are, this afternoon!' said John. 'I
could have done it better myself, I verify believe!'

With these good-natured words, he strode away, and presently was
heard, in company with Boxer, and the old horse, and the cart,
making lively music down the road. What time the dreamy Caleb
still stood, watching his blind daughter, with the same expression
on his face.

'Bertha!' said Caleb, softly. 'What has happened? How changed you
are, my darling, in a few hours - since this morning. YOU silent
and dull all day! What is it? Tell me!'

'But think how cheerful and how happy you have been, Bertha! How
good, and how much loved, by many people.'

'That strikes me to the heart, dear father! Always so mindful of
me! Always so kind to me!'

Caleb was very much perplexed to understand her.

'To be - to be blind, Bertha, my poor dear,' he faltered, 'is a
great affliction; but - '

'I have never felt it!' cried the Blind Girl. 'I have never felt
it, in its fulness. Never! I have sometimes wished that I could
see you, or could see him - only once, dear father, only for one
little minute - that I might know what it is I treasure up,' she
laid her hands upon her breast, 'and hold here! That I might be
sure and have it right! And sometimes (but then I was a child) I
have wept in my prayers at night, to think that when your images
ascended from my heart to Heaven, they might not be the true
resemblance of yourselves. But I have never had these feelings
long. They have passed away and left me tranquil and contented.'

'And they will again,' said Caleb.

'But, father! Oh my good, gentle father, bear with me, if I am
wicked!' said the Blind Girl. 'This is not the sorrow that so
weighs me down!'

Her father could not choose but let his moist eyes overflow; she
was so earnest and pathetic, but he did not understand her, yet.

'Bring her to me,' said Bertha. 'I cannot hold it closed and shut
within myself. Bring her to me, father!'

She knew he hesitated, and said, 'May. Bring May!'

May heard the mention of her name, and coming quietly towards her,
touched her on the arm. The Blind Girl turned immediately, and
held her by both hands.

'Look into my face, Dear heart, Sweet heart!' said Bertha. 'Read
it with your beautiful eyes, and tell me if the truth is written on
it.'

'Dear Bertha, Yes!'

The Blind Girl still, upturning the blank sightless face, down
which the tears were coursing fast, addressed her in these words:

'There is not, in my soul, a wish or thought that is not for your
good, bright May! There is not, in my soul, a grateful
recollection stronger than the deep remembrance which is stored
there, of the many many times when, in the full pride of sight and
beauty, you have had consideration for Blind Bertha, even when we
two were children, or when Bertha was as much a child as ever
blindness can be! Every blessing on your head! Light upon your
happy course! Not the less, my dear May;' and she drew towards
her, in a closer grasp; 'not the less, my bird, because, to-day,
the knowledge that you are to be His wife has wrung my heart almost
to breaking! Father, May, Mary! oh forgive me that it is so, for
the sake of all he has done to relieve the weariness of my dark
life: and for the sake of the belief you have in me, when I call
Heaven to witness that I could not wish him married to a wife more
worthy of his goodness!'

While speaking, she had released May Fielding's hands, and clasped
her garments in an attitude of mingled supplication and love.
Sinking lower and lower down, as she proceeded in her strange
confession, she dropped at last at the feet of her friend, and hid
her blind face in the folds of her dress.

'Great Power!' exclaimed her father, smitten at one blow with the
truth, 'have I deceived her from the cradle, but to break her heart
at last!'

It was well for all of them that Dot, that beaming, useful, busy
little Dot - for such she was, whatever faults she had, and however
you may learn to hate her, in good time - it was well for all of
them, I say, that she was there: or where this would have ended,
it were hard to tell. But Dot, recovering her self-possession,
interposed, before May could reply, or Caleb say another word.

'Come, come, dear Bertha! come away with me! Give her your arm,
May. So! How composed she is, you see, already; and how good it
is of her to mind us,' said the cheery little woman, kissing her
upon the forehead. 'Come away, dear Bertha. Come! and here's her
good father will come with her; won't you, Caleb? To - be - sure!'

Well, well! she was a noble little Dot in such things, and it must
have been an obdurate nature that could have withstood her
influence. When she had got poor Caleb and his Bertha away, that
they might comfort and console each other, as she knew they only
could, she presently came bouncing back, - the saying is, as fresh
as any daisy; I say fresher - to mount guard over that bridling
little piece of consequence in the cap and gloves, and prevent the
dear old creature from making discoveries.

'So bring me the precious Baby, Tilly,' said she, drawing a chair
to the fire; 'and while I have it in my lap, here's Mrs. Fielding,
Tilly, will tell me all about the management of Babies, and put me
right in twenty points where I'm as wrong as can be. Won't you,
Mrs. Fielding?'

Not even the Welsh Giant, who, according to the popular expression,
was so 'slow' as to perform a fatal surgical operation upon
himself, in emulation of a juggling-trick achieved by his arch-
enemy at breakfast-time; not even he fell half so readily into the
snare prepared for him, as the old lady did into this artful
pitfall. The fact of Tackleton having walked out; and furthermore,
of two or three people having been talking together at a distance,
for two minutes, leaving her to her own resources; was quite enough
to have put her on her dignity, and the bewailment of that
mysterious convulsion in the Indigo trade, for four-and-twenty
hours. But this becoming deference to her experience, on the part
of the young mother, was so irresistible, that after a short
affectation of humility, she began to enlighten her with the best
grace in the world; and sitting bolt upright before the wicked Dot,
she did, in half an hour, deliver more infallible domestic recipes
and precepts, than would (if acted on) have utterly destroyed and
done up that Young Peerybingle, though he had been an Infant
Samson.

To change the theme, Dot did a little needlework - she carried the
contents of a whole workbox in her pocket; however she contrived
it, I don't know - then did a little nursing; then a little more
needlework; then had a little whispering chat with May, while the
old lady dozed; and so in little bits of bustle, which was quite
her manner always, found it a very short afternoon. Then, as it
grew dark, and as it was a solemn part of this Institution of the
Pic-Nic that she should perform all Bertha's household tasks, she
trimmed the fire, and swept the hearth, and set the tea-board out,
and drew the curtain, and lighted a candle. Then she played an air
or two on a rude kind of harp, which Caleb had contrived for
Bertha, and played them very well; for Nature had made her delicate
little ear as choice a one for music as it would have been for
jewels, if she had had any to wear. By this time it was the
established hour for having tea; and Tackleton came back again, to
share the meal, and spend the evening.

Caleb and Bertha had returned some time before, and Caleb had sat
down to his afternoon's work. But he couldn't settle to it, poor
fellow, being anxious and remorseful for his daughter. It was
touching to see him sitting idle on his working-stool, regarding
her so wistfully, and always saying in his face, 'Have I deceived
her from her cradle, but to break her heart!'

When it was night, and tea was done, and Dot had nothing more to do
in washing up the cups and saucers; in a word - for I must come to
it, and there is no use in putting it off - when the time drew nigh
for expecting the Carrier's return in every sound of distant
wheels, her manner changed again, her colour came and went, and she
was very restless. Not as good wives are, when listening for their
husbands. No, no, no. It was another sort of restlessness from
that.

Wheels heard. A horse's feet. The barking of a dog. The gradual
approach of all the sounds. The scratching paw of Boxer at the
door!

'Whose step is that!' cried Bertha, starting up.

'Whose step?' returned the Carrier, standing in the portal, with
his brown face ruddy as a winter berry from the keen night air.
'Why, mine.'

'The other step,' said Bertha. 'The man's tread behind you!'

'She is not to be deceived,' observed the Carrier, laughing. 'Come
along, sir. You'll be welcome, never fear!'

He spoke in a loud tone; and as he spoke, the deaf old gentleman
entered.

'He's not so much a stranger, that you haven't seen him once,
Caleb,' said the Carrier. 'You'll give him house-room till we go?'

'Oh surely, John, and take it as an honour.'

'He's the best company on earth, to talk secrets in,' said John.
'I have reasonable good lungs, but he tries 'em, I can tell you.
Sit down, sir. All friends here, and glad to see you!'

When he had imparted this assurance, in a voice that amply
corroborated what he had said about his lungs, he added in his
natural tone, 'A chair in the chimney-corner, and leave to sit
quite silent and look pleasantly about him, is all he cares for.
He's easily pleased.'

Bertha had been listening intently. She called Caleb to her side,
when he had set the chair, and asked him, in a low voice, to
describe their visitor. When he had done so (truly now; with
scrupulous fidelity), she moved, for the first time since he had
come in, and sighed, and seemed to have no further interest
concerning him.

The Carrier was in high spirits, good fellow that he was, and
fonder of his little wife than ever.

'A clumsy Dot she was, this afternoon!' he said, encircling her
with his rough arm, as she stood, removed from the rest; 'and yet I
like her somehow. See yonder, Dot!'

He pointed to the old man. She looked down. I think she trembled.

'He's - ha ha ha! - he's full of admiration for you!' said the
Carrier. 'Talked of nothing else, the whole way here. Why, he's a
brave old boy. I like him for it!'

'I wish he had had a better subject, John,' she said, with an
uneasy glance about the room. At Tackleton especially.

'A better subject!' cried the jovial John. 'There's no such thing.
Come, off with the great-coat, off with the thick shawl, off with
the heavy wrappers! and a cosy half-hour by the fire! My humble
service, Mistress. A game at cribbage, you and I? That's hearty.
The cards and board, Dot. And a glass of beer here, if there's any
left, small wife!'

His challenge was addressed to the old lady, who accepting it with
gracious readiness, they were soon engaged upon the game. At
first, the Carrier looked about him sometimes, with a smile, or now
and then called Dot to peep over his shoulder at his hand, and
advise him on some knotty point. But his adversary being a rigid
disciplinarian, and subject to an occasional weakness in respect of
pegging more than she was entitled to, required such vigilance on
his part, as left him neither eyes nor ears to spare. Thus, his
whole attention gradually became absorbed upon the cards; and he
thought of nothing else, until a hand upon his shoulder restored
him to a consciousness of Tackleton.

'I am sorry to disturb you - but a word, directly.'

'I'm going to deal,' returned the Carrier. 'It's a crisis.'

'It is,' said Tackleton. 'Come here, man!'

There was that in his pale face which made the other rise
immediately, and ask him, in a hurry, what the matter was.

'Hush! John Peerybingle,' said Tackleton. 'I am sorry for this.
I am indeed. I have been afraid of it. I have suspected it from
the first.'

'What is it?' asked the Carrier, with a frightened aspect.

'Hush! I'll show you, if you'll come with me.'

The Carrier accompanied him, without another word. They went
across a yard, where the stars were shining, and by a little side-
door, into Tackleton's own counting-house, where there was a glass
window, commanding the ware-room, which was closed for the night.
There was no light in the counting-house itself, but there were
lamps in the long narrow ware-room; and consequently the window was
bright.

'A moment!' said Tackleton. 'Can you bear to look through that
window, do you think?'

'Why not?' returned the Carrier.

'A moment more,' said Tackleton. 'Don't commit any violence. It's
of no use. It's dangerous too. You're a strong-made man; and you
might do murder before you know it.'

The Carrier looked him in the face, and recoiled a step as if he
had been struck. In one stride he was at the window, and he saw -

Oh Shadow on the Hearth! Oh truthful Cricket! Oh perfidious Wife!

He saw her, with the old man - old no longer, but erect and gallant
- bearing in his hand the false white hair that had won his way
into their desolate and miserable home. He saw her listening to
him, as he bent his head to whisper in her ear; and suffering him
to clasp her round the waist, as they moved slowly down the dim
wooden gallery towards the door by which they had entered it. He
saw them stop, and saw her turn - to have the face, the face he
loved so, so presented to his view! - and saw her, with her own
hands, adjust the lie upon his head, laughing, as she did it, at
his unsuspicious nature!

He clenched his strong right hand at first, as if it would have
beaten down a lion. But opening it immediately again, he spread it
out before the eyes of Tackleton (for he was tender of her, even
then), and so, as they passed out, fell down upon a desk, and was
as weak as any infant.

He was wrapped up to the chin, and busy with his horse and parcels,
when she came into the room, prepared for going home.

'Now, John, dear! Good night, May! Good night, Bertha!'

Could she kiss them? Could she be blithe and cheerful in her
parting? Could she venture to reveal her face to them without a
blush? Yes. Tackleton observed her closely, and she did all this.

Tilly was hushing the Baby, and she crossed and re-crossed
Tackleton, a dozen times, repeating drowsily:

'Did the knowledge that it was to be its wifes, then, wring its
hearts almost to breaking; and did its fathers deceive it from its
cradles but to break its hearts at last!'

'He's going to walk beside the horse's head,' said Tackleton; who
helped her to her seat.

'My dear John. Walk? To-night?'

The muffled figure of her husband made a hasty sign in the
affirmative; and the false stranger and the little nurse being in
their places, the old horse moved off. Boxer, the unconscious
Boxer, running on before, running back, running round and round the
cart, and barking as triumphantly and merrily as ever.

When Tackleton had gone off likewise, escorting May and her mother
home, poor Caleb sat down by the fire beside his daughter; anxious
and remorseful at the core; and still saying in his wistful
contemplation of her, 'Have I deceived her from her cradle, but to
break her heart at last!'

The toys that had been set in motion for the Baby, had all stopped,
and run down, long ago. In the faint light and silence, the
imperturbably calm dolls, the agitated rocking-horses with
distended eyes and nostrils, the old gentlemen at the street-doors,
standing half doubled up upon their failing knees and ankles, the
wry-faced nut-crackers, the very Beasts upon their way into the
Ark, in twos, like a Boarding School out walking, might have been
imagined to be stricken motionless with fantastic wonder, at Dot
being false, or Tackleton beloved, under any combination of
circumstances.

THE Dutch clock in the corner struck Ten, when the Carrier sat down
by his fireside. So troubled and grief-worn, that he seemed to
scare the Cuckoo, who, having cut his ten melodious announcements
as short as possible, plunged back into the Moorish Palace again,
and clapped his little door behind him, as if the unwonted
spectacle were too much for his feelings.

If the little Haymaker had been armed with the sharpest of scythes,
and had cut at every stroke into the Carrier's heart, he never
could have gashed and wounded it, as Dot had done.

It was a heart so full of love for her; so bound up and held
together by innumerable threads of winning remembrance, spun from
the daily working of her many qualities of endearment; it was a
heart in which she had enshrined herself so gently and so closely;
a heart so single and so earnest in its Truth, so strong in right,
so weak in wrong; that it could cherish neither passion nor revenge
at first, and had only room to hold the broken image of its Idol.

But, slowly, slowly, as the Carrier sat brooding on his hearth, now
cold and dark, other and fiercer thoughts began to rise within him,
as an angry wind comes rising in the night. The Stranger was
beneath his outraged roof. Three steps would take him to his
chamber-door. One blow would beat it in. 'You might do murder
before you know it,' Tackleton had said. How could it be murder,
if he gave the villain time to grapple with him hand to hand! He
was the younger man.

It was an ill-timed thought, bad for the dark mood of his mind. It
was an angry thought, goading him to some avenging act, that should
change the cheerful house into a haunted place which lonely
travellers would dread to pass by night; and where the timid would
see shadows struggling in the ruined windows when the moon was dim,
and hear wild noises in the stormy weather.

He was the younger man! Yes, yes; some lover who had won the heart
that HE had never touched. Some lover of her early choice, of whom
she had thought and dreamed, for whom she had pined and pined, when
he had fancied her so happy by his side. O agony to think of it!

She had been above-stairs with the Baby, getting it to bed. As he
sat brooding on the hearth, she came close beside him, without his
knowledge - in the turning of the rack of his great misery, he lost
all other sounds - and put her little stool at his feet. He only
knew it, when he felt her hand upon his own, and saw her looking up
into his face.

With wonder? No. It was his first impression, and he was fain to
look at her again, to set it right. No, not with wonder. With an
eager and inquiring look; but not with wonder. At first it was
alarmed and serious; then, it changed into a strange, wild,
dreadful smile of recognition of his thoughts; then, there was
nothing but her clasped hands on her brow, and her bent head, and
falling hair.

Though the power of Omnipotence had been his to wield at that
moment, he had too much of its diviner property of Mercy in his
breast, to have turned one feather's weight of it against her. But
he could not bear to see her crouching down upon the little seat
where he had often looked on her, with love and pride, so innocent
and gay; and, when she rose and left him, sobbing as she went, he
felt it a relief to have the vacant place beside him rather than
her so long-cherished presence. This in itself was anguish keener
than all, reminding him how desolate he was become, and how the
great bond of his life was rent asunder.

The more he felt this, and the more he knew he could have better
borne to see her lying prematurely dead before him with their
little child upon her breast, the higher and the stronger rose his
wrath against his enemy. He looked about him for a weapon.

There was a gun, hanging on the wall. He took it down, and moved a
pace or two towards the door of the perfidious Stranger's room. He
knew the gun was loaded. Some shadowy idea that it was just to
shoot this man like a wild beast, seized him, and dilated in his
mind until it grew into a monstrous demon in complete possession of
him, casting out all milder thoughts and setting up its undivided
empire.

That phrase is wrong. Not casting out his milder thoughts, but
artfully transforming them. Changing them into scourges to drive
him on. Turning water into blood, love into hate, gentleness into
blind ferocity. Her image, sorrowing, humbled, but still pleading
to his tenderness and mercy with resistless power, never left his
mind; but, staying there, it urged him to the door; raised the
weapon to his shoulder; fitted and nerved his finger to the
trigger; and cried 'Kill him! In his bed!'

He reversed the gun to beat the stock up the door; he already held
it lifted in the air; some indistinct design was in his thoughts of
calling out to him to fly, for God's sake, by the window -

When, suddenly, the struggling fire illumined the whole chimney
with a glow of light; and the Cricket on the Hearth began to Chirp!

No sound he could have heard, no human voice, not even hers, could
so have moved and softened him. The artless words in which she had
told him of her love for this same Cricket, were once more freshly
spoken; her trembling, earnest manner at the moment, was again
before him; her pleasant voice - O what a voice it was, for making
household music at the fireside of an honest man! - thrilled
through and through his better nature, and awoke it into life and
action.

He recoiled from the door, like a man walking in his sleep,
awakened from a frightful dream; and put the gun aside. Clasping
his hands before his face, he then sat down again beside the fire,
and found relief in tears.

The Cricket on the Hearth came out into the room, and stood in
Fairy shape before him.

'"I love it,"' said the Fairy Voice, repeating what he well
remembered, '"for the many times I have heard it, and the many
thoughts its harmless music has given me."'

'She said so!' cried the Carrier. 'True!'

'"This has been a happy home, John; and I love the Cricket for its
sake!"'

'It has been, Heaven knows,' returned the Carrier. 'She made it
happy, always, - until now.'

'So gracefully sweet-tempered; so domestic, joyful, busy, and
light-hearted!' said the Voice.

'Otherwise I never could have loved her as I did,' returned the
Carrier.

The Voice, correcting him, said 'do.'

The Carrier repeated 'as I did.' But not firmly. His faltering
tongue resisted his control, and would speak in its own way, for
itself and him.

The Figure, in an attitude of invocation, raised its hand and said:

'Upon your own hearth - '

'The hearth she has blighted,' interposed the Carrier.

'The hearth she has - how often! - blessed and brightened,' said
the Cricket; 'the hearth which, but for her, were only a few stones
and bricks and rusty bars, but which has been, through her, the
Altar of your Home; on which you have nightly sacrificed some petty
passion, selfishness, or care, and offered up the homage of a
tranquil mind, a trusting nature, and an overflowing heart; so that
the smoke from this poor chimney has gone upward with a better
fragrance than the richest incense that is burnt before the richest
shrines in all the gaudy temples of this world! - Upon your own
hearth; in its quiet sanctuary; surrounded by its gentle influences
and associations; hear her! Hear me! Hear everything that speaks
the language of your hearth and home!'

'And pleads for her?' inquired the Carrier.

'All things that speak the language of your hearth and home, must
plead for her!' returned the Cricket. 'For they speak the truth.'

And while the Carrier, with his head upon his hands, continued to
sit meditating in his chair, the Presence stood beside him,
suggesting his reflections by its power, and presenting them before
him, as in a glass or picture. It was not a solitary Presence.
From the hearthstone, from the chimney, from the clock, the pipe,
the kettle, and the cradle; from the floor, the walls, the ceiling,
and the stairs; from the cart without, and the cupboard within, and
the household implements; from every thing and every place with
which she had ever been familiar, and with which she had ever
entwined one recollection of herself in her unhappy husband's mind;
Fairies came trooping forth. Not to stand beside him as the
Cricket did, but to busy and bestir themselves. To do all honour
to her image. To pull him by the skirts, and point to it when it
appeared. To cluster round it, and embrace it, and strew flowers
for it to tread on. To try to crown its fair head with their tiny
hands. To show that they were fond of it and loved it; and that
there was not one ugly, wicked or accusatory creature to claim
knowledge of it - none but their playful and approving selves.

His thoughts were constant to her image. It was always there.

She sat plying her needle, before the fire, and singing to herself.
Such a blithe, thriving, steady little Dot! The fairy figures
turned upon him all at once, by one consent, with one prodigious
concentrated stare, and seemed to say, 'Is this the light wife you
are mourning for!'

There were sounds of gaiety outside, musical instruments, and noisy
tongues, and laughter. A crowd of young merry-makers came pouring
in, among whom were May Fielding and a score of pretty girls. Dot
was the fairest of them all; as young as any of them too. They
came to summon her to join their party. It was a dance. If ever
little foot were made for dancing, hers was, surely. But she
laughed, and shook her head, and pointed to her cookery on the
fire, and her table ready spread: with an exulting defiance that
rendered her more charming than she was before. And so she merrily
dismissed them, nodding to her would-be partners, one by one, as
they passed, but with a comical indifference, enough to make them
go and drown themselves immediately if they were her admirers - and
they must have been so, more or less; they couldn't help it. And
yet indifference was not her character. O no! For presently,
there came a certain Carrier to the door; and bless her what a
welcome she bestowed upon him!

Again the staring figures turned upon him all at once, and seemed
to say, 'Is this the wife who has forsaken you!'

A shadow fell upon the mirror or the picture: call it what you
will. A great shadow of the Stranger, as he first stood underneath
their roof; covering its surface, and blotting out all other
objects. But the nimble Fairies worked like bees to clear it off
again. And Dot again was there. Still bright and beautiful.

Rocking her little Baby in its cradle, singing to it softly, and
resting her head upon a shoulder which had its counterpart in the
musing figure by which the Fairy Cricket stood.

The night - I mean the real night: not going by Fairy clocks - was
wearing now; and in this stage of the Carrier's thoughts, the moon
burst out, and shone brightly in the sky. Perhaps some calm and
quiet light had risen also, in his mind; and he could think more
soberly of what had happened.

Although the shadow of the Stranger fell at intervals upon the
glass - always distinct, and big, and thoroughly defined - it never
fell so darkly as at first. Whenever it appeared, the Fairies
uttered a general cry of consternation, and plied their little arms
and legs, with inconceivable activity, to rub it out. And whenever
they got at Dot again, and showed her to him once more, bright and
beautiful, they cheered in the most inspiring manner.

They never showed her, otherwise than beautiful and bright, for
they were Household Spirits to whom falsehood is annihilation; and
being so, what Dot was there for them, but the one active, beaming,
pleasant little creature who had been the light and sun of the
Carrier's Home!

The Fairies were prodigiously excited when they showed her, with
the Baby, gossiping among a knot of sage old matrons, and affecting
to be wondrous old and matronly herself, and leaning in a staid,
demure old way upon her husband's arm, attempting - she! such a bud
of a little woman - to convey the idea of having abjured the
vanities of the world in general, and of being the sort of person
to whom it was no novelty at all to be a mother; yet in the same
breath, they showed her, laughing at the Carrier for being awkward,
and pulling up his shirt-collar to make him smart, and mincing
merrily about that very room to teach him how to dance!

They turned, and stared immensely at him when they showed her with
the Blind Girl; for, though she carried cheerfulness and animation
with her wheresoever she went, she bore those influences into Caleb
Plummer's home, heaped up and running over. The Blind Girl's love
for her, and trust in her, and gratitude to her; her own good busy
way of setting Bertha's thanks aside; her dexterous little arts for
filling up each moment of the visit in doing something useful to
the house, and really working hard while feigning to make holiday;
her bountiful provision of those standing delicacies, the Veal and
Ham-Pie and the bottles of Beer; her radiant little face arriving
at the door, and taking leave; the wonderful expression in her
whole self, from her neat foot to the crown of her head, of being a
part of the establishment - a something necessary to it, which it
couldn't be without; all this the Fairies revelled in, and loved
her for. And once again they looked upon him all at once,
appealingly, and seemed to say, while some among them nestled in
her dress and fondled her, 'Is this the wife who has betrayed your
confidence!'

More than once, or twice, or thrice, in the long thoughtful night,
they showed her to him sitting on her favourite seat, with her bent
head, her hands clasped on her brow, her falling hair. As he had
seen her last. And when they found her thus, they neither turned
nor looked upon him, but gathered close round her, and comforted
and kissed her, and pressed on one another to show sympathy and
kindness to her, and forgot him altogether.

Thus the night passed. The moon went down; the stars grew pale;
the cold day broke; the sun rose. The Carrier still sat, musing,
in the chimney corner. He had sat there, with his head upon his
hands, all night. All night the faithful Cricket had been Chirp,
Chirp, Chirping on the Hearth. All night he had listened to its
voice. All night the household Fairies had been busy with him.
All night she had been amiable and blameless in the glass, except
when that one shadow fell upon it.

He rose up when it was broad day, and washed and dressed himself.
He couldn't go about his customary cheerful avocations - he wanted
spirit for them - but it mattered the less, that it was Tackleton's
wedding-day, and he had arranged to make his rounds by proxy. He
thought to have gone merrily to church with Dot. But such plans
were at an end. It was their own wedding-day too. Ah! how little
he had looked for such a close to such a year!

The Carrier had expected that Tackleton would pay him an early
visit; and he was right. He had not walked to and fro before his
own door, many minutes, when he saw the Toy-merchant coming in his
chaise along the road. As the chaise drew nearer, he perceived
that Tackleton was dressed out sprucely for his marriage, and that
he had decorated his horse's head with flowers and favours.

The horse looked much more like a bridegroom than Tackleton, whose
half-closed eye was more disagreeably expressive than ever. But
the Carrier took little heed of this. His thoughts had other
occupation.

'John Peerybingle!' said Tackleton, with an air of condolence. 'My
good fellow, how do you find yourself this morning?'

'I have had but a poor night, Master Tackleton,' returned the
Carrier, shaking his head: 'for I have been a good deal disturbed
in my mind. But it's over now! Can you spare me half an hour or
so, for some private talk?'

'I came on purpose,' returned Tackleton, alighting. 'Never mind
the horse. He'll stand quiet enough, with the reins over this
post, if you'll give him a mouthful of hay.'

The Carrier having brought it from his stable, and set it before
him, they turned into the house.

'You are not married before noon,' he said, 'I think?'

'No,' answered Tackleton. 'Plenty of time. Plenty of time.'

When they entered the kitchen, Tilly Slowboy was rapping at the
Stranger's door; which was only removed from it by a few steps.
One of her very red eyes (for Tilly had been crying all night long,
because her mistress cried) was at the keyhole; and she was
knocking very loud; and seemed frightened.

'If you please I can't make nobody hear,' said Tilly, looking
round. 'I hope nobody an't gone and been and died if you please!'

This philanthropic wish, Miss Slowboy emphasised with various new
raps and kicks at the door; which led to no result whatever.

'Shall I go?' said Tackleton. 'It's curious.'

The Carrier, who had turned his face from the door, signed to him
to go if he would.

So Tackleton went to Tilly Slowboy's relief; and he too kicked and
knocked; and he too failed to get the least reply. But he thought
of trying the handle of the door; and as it opened easily, he
peeped in, looked in, went in, and soon came running out again.

'John Peerybingle,' said Tackleton, in his ear. 'I hope there has
been nothing - nothing rash in the night?'

The Carrier turned upon him quickly.

'Because he's gone!' said Tackleton; 'and the window's open. I
don't see any marks - to be sure it's almost on a level with the
garden: but I was afraid there might have been some - some
scuffle. Eh?'

He nearly shut up the expressive eye altogether; he looked at him
so hard. And he gave his eye, and his face, and his whole person,
a sharp twist. As if he would have screwed the truth out of him.

'Make yourself easy,' said the Carrier. 'He went into that room
last night, without harm in word or deed from me, and no one has
entered it since. He is away of his own free will. I'd go out
gladly at that door, and beg my bread from house to house, for
life, if I could so change the past that he had never come. But he
has come and gone. And I have done with him!'

'Oh! - Well, I think he has got off pretty easy,' said Tackleton,
taking a chair.

The sneer was lost upon the Carrier, who sat down too, and shaded
his face with his hand, for some little time, before proceeding.

'You showed me last night,' he said at length, 'my wife; my wife
that I love; secretly - '

'And tenderly,' insinuated Tackleton.

'Conniving at that man's disguise, and giving him opportunities of
meeting her alone. I think there's no sight I wouldn't have rather
seen than that. I think there's no man in the world I wouldn't
have rather had to show it me.'

'I confess to having had my suspicions always,' said Tackleton.
'And that has made me objectionable here, I know.'

'But as you did show it me,' pursued the Carrier, not minding him;
'and as you saw her, my wife, my wife that I love' - his voice, and
eye, and hand, grew steadier and firmer as he repeated these words:
evidently in pursuance of a steadfast purpose - 'as you saw her at
this disadvantage, it is right and just that you should also see
with my eyes, and look into my breast, and know what my mind is,
upon the subject. For it's settled,' said the Carrier, regarding
him attentively. 'And nothing can shake it now.'

Tackleton muttered a few general words of assent, about its being
necessary to vindicate something or other; but he was overawed by
the manner of his companion. Plain and unpolished as it was, it
had a something dignified and noble in it, which nothing but the
soul of generous honour dwelling in the man could have imparted.

'I am a plain, rough man,' pursued the Carrier, 'with very little
to recommend me. I am not a clever man, as you very well know. I
am not a young man. I loved my little Dot, because I had seen her
grow up, from a child, in her father's house; because I knew how
precious she was; because she had been my life, for years and
years. There's many men I can't compare with, who never could have
loved my little Dot like me, I think!'

He paused, and softly beat the ground a short time with his foot,
before resuming.

'I often thought that though I wasn't good enough for her, I should
make her a kind husband, and perhaps know her value better than
another; and in this way I reconciled it to myself, and came to
think it might be possible that we should be married. And in the
end it came about, and we were married.'

'Hah!' said Tackleton, with a significant shake of the head.

'I had studied myself; I had had experience of myself; I knew how
much I loved her, and how happy I should be,' pursued the Carrier.
'But I had not - I feel it now - sufficiently considered her.'

'To be sure,' said Tackleton. 'Giddiness, frivolity, fickleness,
love of admiration! Not considered! All left out of sight! Hah!'

'You had best not interrupt me,' said the Carrier, with some
sternness, 'till you understand me; and you're wide of doing so.
If, yesterday, I'd have struck that man down at a blow, who dared
to breathe a word against her, to-day I'd set my foot upon his
face, if he was my brother!'

The Toy-merchant gazed at him in astonishment. He went on in a
softer tone:

'Did I consider,' said the Carrier, 'that I took her - at her age,
and with her beauty - from her young companions, and the many
scenes of which she was the ornament; in which she was the
brightest little star that ever shone, to shut her up from day to
day in my dull house, and keep my tedious company? Did I consider
how little suited I was to her sprightly humour, and how wearisome
a plodding man like me must be, to one of her quick spirit? Did I
consider that it was no merit in me, or claim in me, that I loved
her, when everybody must, who knew her? Never. I took advantage
of her hopeful nature and her cheerful disposition; and I married
her. I wish I never had! For her sake; not for mine!'

The Toy-merchant gazed at him, without winking. Even the half-shut
eye was open now.

'Heaven bless her!' said the Carrier, 'for the cheerful constancy
with which she tried to keep the knowledge of this from me! And
Heaven help me, that, in my slow mind, I have not found it out
before! Poor child! Poor Dot! I not to find it out, who have
seen her eyes fill with tears, when such a marriage as our own was
spoken of! I, who have seen the secret trembling on her lips a
hundred times, and never suspected it till last night! Poor girl!
That I could ever hope she would be fond of me! That I could ever
believe she was!'

'She made a show of it,' said Tackleton. 'She made such a show of
it, that to tell you the truth it was the origin of my misgivings.'

And here he asserted the superiority of May Fielding, who certainly
made no sort of show of being fond of HIM.

'She has tried,' said the poor Carrier, with greater emotion than
he had exhibited yet; 'I only now begin to know how hard she has
tried, to be my dutiful and zealous wife. How good she has been;
how much she has done; how brave and strong a heart she has; let
the happiness I have known under this roof bear witness! It will
be some help and comfort to me, when I am here alone.'

'Here alone?' said Tackleton. 'Oh! Then you do mean to take some
notice of this?'

'I mean,' returned the Carrier, 'to do her the greatest kindness,
and make her the best reparation, in my power. I can release her
from the daily pain of an unequal marriage, and the struggle to
conceal it. She shall be as free as I can render her.'

'Make HER reparation!' exclaimed Tackleton, twisting and turning
his great ears with his hands. 'There must be something wrong
here. You didn't say that, of course.'

The Carrier set his grip upon the collar of the Toy-merchant, and
shook him like a reed.

'Listen to me!' he said. 'And take care that you hear me right.
Listen to me. Do I speak plainly?'

'Very plainly indeed,' answered Tackleton.

'As if I meant it?'

'Very much as if you meant it.'

'I sat upon that hearth, last night, all night,' exclaimed the
Carrier. 'On the spot where she has often sat beside me, with her
sweet face looking into mine. I called up her whole life, day by
day. I had her dear self, in its every passage, in review before
me. And upon my soul she is innocent, if there is One to judge the
innocent and guilty!'

Staunch Cricket on the Hearth! Loyal household Fairies!

'Passion and distrust have left me!' said the Carrier; 'and nothing
but my grief remains. In an unhappy moment some old lover, better
suited to her tastes and years than I; forsaken, perhaps, for me,
against her will; returned. In an unhappy moment, taken by
surprise, and wanting time to think of what she did, she made
herself a party to his treachery, by concealing it. Last night she
saw him, in the interview we witnessed. It was wrong. But
otherwise than this she is innocent if there is truth on earth!'

'If that is your opinion' - Tackleton began.

'So, let her go!' pursued the Carrier. 'Go, with my blessing for
the many happy hours she has given me, and my forgiveness for any
pang she has caused me. Let her go, and have the peace of mind I
wish her! She'll never hate me. She'll learn to like me better,
when I'm not a drag upon her, and she wears the chain I have
riveted, more lightly. This is the day on which I took her, with
so little thought for her enjoyment, from her home. To-day she
shall return to it, and I will trouble her no more. Her father and
mother will be here to-day - we had made a little plan for keeping
it together - and they shall take her home. I can trust her,
there, or anywhere. She leaves me without blame, and she will live
so I am sure. If I should die - I may perhaps while she is still
young; I have lost some courage in a few hours - she'll find that I
remembered her, and loved her to the last! This is the end of what
you showed me. Now, it's over!'

'O no, John, not over. Do not say it's over yet! Not quite yet.
I have heard your noble words. I could not steal away, pretending
to be ignorant of what has affected me with such deep gratitude.
Do not say it's over, 'till the clock has struck again!'

She had entered shortly after Tackleton, and had remained there.
She never looked at Tackleton, but fixed her eyes upon her husband.
But she kept away from him, setting as wide a space as possible
between them; and though she spoke with most impassioned
earnestness, she went no nearer to him even then. How different in
this from her old self!

'No hand can make the clock which will strike again for me the
hours that are gone,' replied the Carrier, with a faint smile.
'But let it be so, if you will, my dear. It will strike soon.
It's of little matter what we say. I'd try to please you in a
harder case than that.'

'Well!' muttered Tackleton. 'I must be off, for when the clock
strikes again, it'll be necessary for me to be upon my way to
church. Good morning, John Peerybingle. I'm sorry to be deprived
of the pleasure of your company. Sorry for the loss, and the
occasion of it too!'

'I have spoken plainly?' said the Carrier, accompanying him to the
door.

'Oh quite!'

'And you'll remember what I have said?'

'Why, if you compel me to make the observation,' said Tackleton,
previously taking the precaution of getting into his chaise; 'I
must say that it was so very unexpected, that I'm far from being
likely to forget it.'

'The better for us both,' returned the Carrier. 'Good bye. I give
you joy!'

'I wish I could give it to YOU,' said Tackleton. 'As I can't;
thank'ee. Between ourselves, (as I told you before, eh?) I don't
much think I shall have the less joy in my married life, because
May hasn't been too officious about me, and too demonstrative.
Good bye! Take care of yourself.'

The Carrier stood looking after him until he was smaller in the
distance than his horse's flowers and favours near at hand; and
then, with a deep sigh, went strolling like a restless, broken man,
among some neighbouring elms; unwilling to return until the clock
was on the eve of striking.

His little wife, being left alone, sobbed piteously; but often
dried her eyes and checked herself, to say how good he was, how
excellent he was! and once or twice she laughed; so heartily,
triumphantly, and incoherently (still crying all the time), that
Tilly was quite horrified.

'Ow if you please don't!' said Tilly. 'It's enough to dead and
bury the Baby, so it is if you please.'

'Will you bring him sometimes, to see his father, Tilly,' inquired
her mistress, drying her eyes; 'when I can't live here, and have
gone to my old home?'

'Ow if you please don't!' cried Tilly, throwing back her head, and
bursting out into a howl - she looked at the moment uncommonly like
Boxer. 'Ow if you please don't! Ow, what has everybody gone and
been and done with everybody, making everybody else so wretched!
Ow-w-w-w!'

The soft-hearted Slowboy trailed off at this juncture, into such a
deplorable howl, the more tremendous from its long suppression,
that she must infallibly have awakened the Baby, and frightened him
into something serious (probably convulsions), if her eyes had not
encountered Caleb Plummer, leading in his daughter. This spectacle
restoring her to a sense of the proprieties, she stood for some few
moments silent, with her mouth wide open; and then, posting off to
the bed on which the Baby lay asleep, danced in a weird, Saint
Vitus manner on the floor, and at the same time rummaged with her
face and head among the bedclothes, apparently deriving much relief
from those extraordinary operations.

'Mary!' said Bertha. 'Not at the marriage!'

'I told her you would not be there, mum,' whispered Caleb. 'I
heard as much last night. But bless you,' said the little man,
taking her tenderly by both hands, 'I don't care for what they say.
I don't believe them. There an't much of me, but that little
should be torn to pieces sooner than I'd trust a word against you!'

He put his arms about her and hugged her, as a child might have
hugged one of his own dolls.

'Bertha couldn't stay at home this morning,' said Caleb. 'She was
afraid, I know, to hear the bells ring, and couldn't trust herself
to be so near them on their wedding-day. So we started in good
time, and came here. I have been thinking of what I have done,'
said Caleb, after a moment's pause; 'I have been blaming myself
till I hardly knew what to do or where to turn, for the distress of
mind I have caused her; and I've come to the conclusion that I'd
better, if you'll stay with me, mum, the while, tell her the truth.
You'll stay with me the while?' he inquired, trembling from head to
foot. 'I don't know what effect it may have upon her; I don't know
what she'll think of me; I don't know that she'll ever care for her
poor father afterwards. But it's best for her that she should be
undeceived, and I must bear the consequences as I deserve!'

' Mary,' said Bertha, 'where is your hand! Ah! Here it is here it
is!' pressing it to her lips, with a smile, and drawing it through
her arm. 'I heard them speaking softly among themselves, last
night, of some blame against you. They were wrong.'

The Carrier's Wife was silent. Caleb answered for her.

'They were wrong,' he said.

'I knew it!' cried Bertha, proudly. 'I told them so. I scorned to
hear a word! Blame HER with justice!' she pressed the hand between
her own, and the soft cheek against her face. 'No! I am not so
blind as that.'

Her father went on one side of her, while Dot remained upon the
other: holding her hand.

'I know you all,' said Bertha, 'better than you think. But none so
well as her. Not even you, father. There is nothing half so real
and so true about me, as she is. If I could be restored to sight
this instant, and not a word were spoken, I could choose her from a
crowd! My sister!'

'Bertha, my dear!' said Caleb, 'I have something on my mind I want
to tell you, while we three are alone. Hear me kindly! I have a
confession to make to you, my darling.'

'A confession, father?'

'I have wandered from the truth and lost myself, my child,' said
Caleb, with a pitiable expression in his bewildered face. 'I have
wandered from the truth, intending to be kind to you; and have been
cruel.'

She turned her wonder-stricken face towards him, and repeated
'Cruel!'

'He accuses himself too strongly, Bertha,' said Dot. 'You'll say
so, presently. You'll be the first to tell him so.'

'He cruel to me!' cried Bertha, with a smile of incredulity.

'Not meaning it, my child,' said Caleb. 'But I have been; though I
never suspected it, till yesterday. My dear blind daughter, hear
me and forgive me! The world you live in, heart of mine, doesn't
exist as I have represented it. The eyes you have trusted in, have
been false to you.'

She turned her wonder-stricken face towards him still; but drew
back, and clung closer to her friend.

'Your road in life was rough, my poor one,' said Caleb, 'and I
meant to smooth it for you. I have altered objects, changed the
characters of people, invented many things that never have been, to
make you happier. I have had concealments from you, put deceptions
on you, God forgive me! and surrounded you with fancies.'

'But living people are not fancies!' she said hurriedly, and
turning very pale, and still retiring from him. 'You can't change
them.'

'Oh father! why do you say, I know?' she answered, in a term of
keen reproach. 'What and whom do I know! I who have no leader! I
so miserably blind.'

In the anguish of her heart, she stretched out her hands, as if she
were groping her way; then spread them, in a manner most forlorn
and sad, upon her face.

'The marriage that takes place to-day,' said Caleb, 'is with a
stern, sordid, grinding man. A hard master to you and me, my dear,
for many years. Ugly in his looks, and in his nature. Cold and
callous always. Unlike what I have painted him to you in
everything, my child. In everything.'

'Oh why,' cried the Blind Girl, tortured, as it seemed, almost
beyond endurance, 'why did you ever do this! Why did you ever fill
my heart so full, and then come in like Death, and tear away the
objects of my love! O Heaven, how blind I am! How helpless and
alone!'

Her afflicted father hung his head, and offered no reply but in his
penitence and sorrow.

She had been but a short time in this passion of regret, when the
Cricket on the Hearth, unheard by all but her, began to chirp. Not
merrily, but in a low, faint, sorrowing way. It was so mournful
that her tears began to flow; and when the Presence which had been
beside the Carrier all night, appeared behind her, pointing to her
father, they fell down like rain.

She heard the Cricket-voice more plainly soon, and was conscious,
through her blindness, of the Presence hovering about her father.

'Mary,' said the Blind Girl, 'tell me what my home is. What it
truly is.'

'It is a poor place, Bertha; very poor and bare indeed. The house
will scarcely keep out wind and rain another winter. It is as
roughly shielded from the weather, Bertha,' Dot continued in a low,
clear voice, 'as your poor father in his sack-cloth coat.'

The Blind Girl, greatly agitated, rose, and led the Carrier's
little wife aside.

'Those presents that I took such care of; that came almost at my
wish, and were so dearly welcome to me,' she said, trembling;
'where did they come from? Did you send them?'

'No.'

'Who then?'

Dot saw she knew, already, and was silent. The Blind Girl spread
her hands before her face again. But in quite another manner now.

'Dear Mary, a moment. One moment? More this way. Speak softly to
me. You are true, I know. You'd not deceive me now; would you?'

'No, Bertha, indeed!'

'No, I am sure you would not. You have too much pity for me.
Mary, look across the room to where we were just now - to where my
father is - my father, so compassionate and loving to me - and tell
me what you see.'

'I see,' said Dot, who understood her well, 'an old man sitting in
a chair, and leaning sorrowfully on the back, with his face resting
on his hand. As if his child should comfort him, Bertha.'

'Yes, yes. She will. Go on.'

'He is an old man, worn with care and work. He is a spare,
dejected, thoughtful, grey-haired man. I see him now, despondent
and bowed down, and striving against nothing. But, Bertha, I have
seen him many times before, and striving hard in many ways for one
great sacred object. And I honour his grey head, and bless him!'

The Blind Girl broke away from her; and throwing herself upon her
knees before him, took the grey head to her breast.

'It is my sight restored. It is my sight!' she cried. 'I have
been blind, and now my eyes are open. I never knew him! To think
I might have died, and never truly seen the father who has been so
loving to me!'

There were no words for Caleb's emotion.

'There is not a gallant figure on this earth,' exclaimed the Blind
Girl, holding him in her embrace, 'that I would love so dearly, and
would cherish so devotedly, as this! The greyer, and more worn,
the dearer, father! Never let them say I am blind again. There's
not a furrow in his face, there's not a hair upon his head, that
shall be forgotten in my prayers and thanks to Heaven!'

Caleb managed to articulate 'My Bertha!'

'And in my blindness, I believed him,' said the girl, caressing him
with tears of exquisite affection, 'to be so different! And having
him beside me, day by day, so mindful of me - always, never dreamed
of this!'

'Nothing is gone,' she answered. 'Dearest father, no! Everything
is here - in you. The father that I loved so well; the father that
I never loved enough, and never knew; the benefactor whom I first
began to reverence and love, because he had such sympathy for me;
All are here in you. Nothing is dead to me. The soul of all that
was most dear to me is here - here, with the worn face, and the
grey head. And I am NOT blind, father, any longer!'

Dot's whole attention had been concentrated, during this discourse,
upon the father and daughter; but looking, now, towards the little
Haymaker in the Moorish meadow, she saw that the clock was within a
few minutes of striking, and fell, immediately, into a nervous and
excited state.

'Father,' said Bertha, hesitating. 'Mary.'

'Yes, my dear,' returned Caleb. 'Here she is.'

'There is no change in HER. You never told me anything of HER that
was not true?'

'I should have done it, my dear, I am afraid,' returned Caleb, 'if
I could have made her better than she was. But I must have changed
her for the worse, if I had changed her at all. Nothing could
improve her, Bertha.'

Confident as the Blind Girl had been when she asked the question,
her delight and pride in the reply and her renewed embrace of Dot,
were charming to behold.

'More changes than you think for, may happen though, my dear,' said
Dot. 'Changes for the better, I mean; changes for great joy to
some of us. You mustn't let them startle you too much, if any such
should ever happen, and affect you? Are those wheels upon the
road? You've a quick ear, Bertha. Are they wheels?'

'Yes. Coming very fast.'

'I - I - I know you have a quick ear,' said Dot, placing her hand
upon her heart, and evidently talking on, as fast as she could to
hide its palpitating state, 'because I have noticed it often, and
because you were so quick to find out that strange step last night.
Though why you should have said, as I very well recollect you did
say, Bertha, "Whose step is that!" and why you should have taken
any greater observation of it than of any other step, I don't know.
Though as I said just now, there are great changes in the world:
great changes: and we can't do better than prepare ourselves to be
surprised at hardly anything.'

Caleb wondered what this meant; perceiving that she spoke to him,
no less than to his daughter. He saw her, with astonishment, so
fluttered and distressed that she could scarcely breathe; and
holding to a chair, to save herself from falling.

'They are wheels indeed!' she panted. 'Coming nearer! Nearer!
Very close! And now you hear them stopping at the garden-gate!
And now you hear a step outside the door - the same step, Bertha,
is it not! - and now!' -

She uttered a wild cry of uncontrollable delight; and running up to
Caleb put her hands upon his eyes, as a young man rushed into the
room, and flinging away his hat into the air, came sweeping down
upon them.

'Is it over?' cried Dot.

'Yes!'

'Happily over?'

'Yes!'

'Do you recollect the voice, dear Caleb? Did you ever hear the
like of it before?' cried Dot.

'If my boy in the Golden South Americas was alive' - said Caleb,
trembling.

'He is alive!' shrieked Dot, removing her hands from his eyes, and
clapping them in ecstasy; 'look at him! See where he stands before
you, healthy and strong! Your own dear son! Your own dear living,
loving brother, Bertha

All honour to the little creature for her transports! All honour
to her tears and laughter, when the three were locked in one
another's arms! All honour to the heartiness with which she met
the sunburnt sailor-fellow, with his dark streaming hair, half-way,
and never turned her rosy little mouth aside, but suffered him to
kiss it, freely, and to press her to his bounding heart!

And honour to the Cuckoo too - why not! - for bursting out of the
trap-door in the Moorish Palace like a house-breaker, and
hiccoughing twelve times on the assembled company, as if he had got
drunk for joy!

The Carrier, entering, started back. And well he might, to find
himself in such good company.

'Look, John!' said Caleb, exultingly, 'look here! My own boy from
the Golden South Americas! My own son! Him that you fitted out,
and sent away yourself! Him that you were always such a friend
to!'

The Carrier advanced to seize him by the hand; but, recoiling, as
some feature in his face awakened a remembrance of the Deaf Man in
the Cart, said:

'And could you steal, disguised, into the house of your old
friend?' rejoined the Carrier. 'There was a frank boy once - how
many years is it, Caleb, since we heard that he was dead, and had
it proved, we thought? - who never would have done that.'

'There was a generous friend of mine, once; more a father to me
than a friend;' said Edward, 'who never would have judged me, or
any other man, unheard. You were he. So I am certain you will
hear me now.'

The Carrier, with a troubled glance at Dot, who still kept far away
from him, replied, 'Well! that's but fair. I will.'

'You must know that when I left here, a boy,' said Edward, 'I was
in love, and my love was returned. She was a very young girl, who
perhaps (you may tell me) didn't know her own mind. But I knew
mine, and I had a passion for her.'

'You had!' exclaimed the Carrier. 'You!'

'Indeed I had,' returned the other. 'And she returned it. I have
ever since believed she did, and now I am sure she did.'

'Heaven help me!' said the Carrier. 'This is worse than all.'

'Constant to her,' said Edward, 'and returning, full of hope, after
many hardships and perils, to redeem my part of our old contract, I
heard, twenty miles away, that she was false to me; that she had
forgotten me; and had bestowed herself upon another and a richer
man. I had no mind to reproach her; but I wished to see her, and
to prove beyond dispute that this was true. I hoped she might have
been forced into it, against her own desire and recollection. It
would be small comfort, but it would be some, I thought, and on I
came. That I might have the truth, the real truth; observing
freely for myself, and judging for myself, without obstruction on
the one hand, or presenting my own influence (if I had any) before
her, on the other; I dressed myself unlike myself - you know how;
and waited on the road - you know where. You had no suspicion of
me; neither had - had she,' pointing to Dot, 'until I whispered in
her ear at that fireside, and she so nearly betrayed me.'

'But when she knew that Edward was alive, and had come back,'
sobbed Dot, now speaking for herself, as she had burned to do, all
through this narrative; 'and when she knew his purpose, she advised
him by all means to keep his secret close; for his old friend John
Peerybingle was much too open in his nature, and too clumsy in all
artifice - being a clumsy man in general,' said Dot, half laughing
and half crying - 'to keep it for him. And when she - that's me,
John,' sobbed the little woman - 'told him all, and how his
sweetheart had believed him to be dead; and how she had at last
been over-persuaded by her mother into a marriage which the silly,
dear old thing called advantageous; and when she - that's me again,
John - told him they were not yet married (though close upon it),
and that it would be nothing but a sacrifice if it went on, for
there was no love on her side; and when he went nearly mad with joy
to hear it; then she - that's me again - said she would go between
them, as she had often done before in old times, John, and would
sound his sweetheart and be sure that what she - me again, John -
said and thought was right. And it was right, John! And they were
brought together, John! And they were married, John, an hour ago!
And here's the Bride! And Gruff and Tackleton may die a bachelor!
And I'm a happy little woman, May, God bless you!'

She was an irresistible little woman, if that be anything to the
purpose; and never so completely irresistible as in her present
transports. There never were congratulations so endearing and
delicious, as those she lavished on herself and on the Bride.

Amid the tumult of emotions in his breast, the honest Carrier had
stood, confounded. Flying, now, towards her, Dot stretched out her
hand to stop him, and retreated as before.

'No, John, no! Hear all! Don't love me any more, John, till
you've heard every word I have to say. It was wrong to have a
secret from you, John. I'm very sorry I didn't think it any harm,
till I came and sat down by you on the little stool last night.
But when I knew by what was written in your face, that you had seen
me walking in the gallery with Edward, and when I knew what you
thought, I felt how giddy and how wrong it was. But oh, dear John,
how could you, could you, think so!'

Little woman, how she sobbed again! John Peerybingle would have
caught her in his arms. But no; she wouldn't let him.

'Don't love me yet, please, John! Not for a long time yet! When I
was sad about this intended marriage, dear, it was because I
remembered May and Edward such young lovers; and knew that her
heart was far away from Tackleton. You believe that, now. Don't
you, John?'

John was going to make another rush at this appeal; but she stopped
him again.

'No; keep there, please, John! When I laugh at you, as I sometimes
do, John, and call you clumsy and a dear old goose, and names of
that sort, it's because I love you, John, so well, and take such
pleasure in your ways, and wouldn't see you altered in the least
respect to have you made a King to-morrow.'

'Hooroar!' said Caleb with unusual vigour. 'My opinion!'

'And when I speak of people being middle-aged, and steady, John,
and pretend that we are a humdrum couple, going on in a jog-trot
sort of way, it's only because I'm such a silly little thing, John,
that I like, sometimes, to act a kind of Play with Baby, and all
that: and make believe.'

She saw that he was coming; and stopped him again. But she was
very nearly too late.

'No, don't love me for another minute or two, if you please, John!
What I want most to tell you, I have kept to the last. My dear,
good, generous John, when we were talking the other night about the
Cricket, I had it on my lips to say, that at first I did not love
you quite so dearly as I do now; that when I first came home here,
I was half afraid I mightn't learn to love you every bit as well as
I hoped and prayed I might - being so very young, John! But, dear
John, every day and hour I loved you more and more. And if I could
have loved you better than I do, the noble words I heard you say
this morning, would have made me. But I can't. All the affection
that I had (it was a great deal, John) I gave you, as you well
deserve, long, long ago, and I have no more left to give. Now, my
dear husband, take me to your heart again! That's my home, John;
and never, never think of sending me to any other!'

You never will derive so much delight from seeing a glorious little
woman in the arms of a third party, as you would have felt if you
had seen Dot run into the Carrier's embrace. It was the most
complete, unmitigated, soul-fraught little piece of earnestness
that ever you beheld in all your days.

You maybe sure the Carrier was in a state of perfect rapture; and
you may be sure Dot was likewise; and you may be sure they all
were, inclusive of Miss Slowboy, who wept copiously for joy, and
wishing to include her young charge in the general interchange of
congratulations, handed round the Baby to everybody in succession,
as if it were something to drink.

But, now, the sound of wheels was heard again outside the door; and
somebody exclaimed that Gruff and Tackleton was coming back.
Speedily that worthy gentleman appeared, looking warm and
flustered.

'Why, what the Devil's this, John Peerybingle!' said Tackleton.
'There's some mistake. I appointed Mrs. Tackleton to meet me at
the church, and I'll swear I passed her on the road, on her way
here. Oh! here she is! I beg your pardon, sir; I haven't the
pleasure of knowing you; but if you can do me the favour to spare
this young lady, she has rather a particular engagement this
morning.'

'But I can't spare her,' returned Edward. 'I couldn't think of
it.'

'What do you mean, you vagabond?' said Tackleton.

'I mean, that as I can make allowance for your being vexed,'
returned the other, with a smile, 'I am as deaf to harsh discourse
this morning, as I was to all discourse last night.'

The look that Tackleton bestowed upon him, and the start he gave!

'I am sorry, sir,' said Edward, holding out May's left hand, and
especially the third finger; 'that the young lady can't accompany
you to church; but as she has been there once, this morning,
perhaps you'll excuse her.'

Tackleton looked hard at the third finger, and took a little piece
of silver-paper, apparently containing a ring, from his waistcoat-
pocket.

'Miss Slowboy,' said Tackleton. 'Will you have the kindness to
throw that in the fire? Thank'ee.'

'It was a previous engagement, quite an old engagement, that
prevented my wife from keeping her appointment with you, I assure
you,' said Edward.

'Mr. Tackleton will do me the justice to acknowledge that I
revealed it to him faithfully; and that I told him, many times, I
never could forget it,' said May, blushing.

'Ah, I shouldn't have known you, sir,' said Tackleton, scrutinising
his face narrowly, and making a low bow. 'I give you joy, sir!'

'Thank'ee.'

'Mrs. Peerybingle,' said Tackleton, turning suddenly to where she
stood with her husband; 'I am sorry. You haven't done me a very
great kindness, but, upon my life I am sorry. You are better than
I thought you. John Peerybingle, I am sorry. You understand me;
that's enough. It's quite correct, ladies and gentlemen all, and
perfectly satisfactory. Good morning!'

With these words he carried it off, and carried himself off too:
merely stopping at the door, to take the flowers and favours from
his horse's head, and to kick that animal once, in the ribs, as a
means of informing him that there was a screw loose in his
arrangements.

Of course it became a serious duty now, to make such a day of it,
as should mark these events for a high Feast and Festival in the
Peerybingle Calendar for evermore. Accordingly, Dot went to work
to produce such an entertainment, as should reflect undying honour
on the house and on every one concerned; and in a very short space
of time, she was up to her dimpled elbows in flour, and whitening
the Carrier's coat, every time he came near her, by stopping him to
give him a kiss. That good fellow washed the greens, and peeled
the turnips, and broke the plates, and upset iron pots full of cold
water on the fire, and made himself useful in all sorts of ways:
while a couple of professional assistants, hastily called in from
somewhere in the neighbourhood, as on a point of life or death, ran
against each other in all the doorways and round all the corners,
and everybody tumbled over Tilly Slowboy and the Baby, everywhere.
Tilly never came out in such force before. Her ubiquity was the
theme of general admiration. She was a stumbling-block in the
passage at five-and-twenty minutes past two; a man-trap in the
kitchen at half-past two precisely; and a pitfall in the garret at
five-and-twenty minutes to three. The Baby's head was, as it were,
a test and touchstone for every description of matter, - animal,
vegetable, and mineral. Nothing was in use that day that didn't
come, at some time or other, into close acquaintance with it.

Then, there was a great Expedition set on foot to go and find out
Mrs. Fielding; and to be dismally penitent to that excellent
gentlewoman; and to bring her back, by force, if needful, to be
happy and forgiving. And when the Expedition first discovered her,
she would listen to no terms at all, but said, an unspeakable
number of times, that ever she should have lived to see the day!
and couldn't be got to say anything else, except, 'Now carry me to
the grave:' which seemed absurd, on account of her not being dead,
or anything at all like it. After a time, she lapsed into a state
of dreadful calmness, and observed, that when that unfortunate
train of circumstances had occurred in the Indigo Trade, she had
foreseen that she would be exposed, during her whole life, to every
species of insult and contumely; and that she was glad to find it
was the case; and begged they wouldn't trouble themselves about
her, - for what was she? oh, dear! a nobody! - but would forget
that such a being lived, and would take their course in life
without her. From this bitterly sarcastic mood, she passed into an
angry one, in which she gave vent to the remarkable expression that
the worm would turn if trodden on; and, after that, she yielded to
a soft regret, and said, if they had only given her their
confidence, what might she not have had it in her power to suggest!
Taking advantage of this crisis in her feelings, the Expedition
embraced her; and she very soon had her gloves on, and was on her
way to John Peerybingle's in a state of unimpeachable gentility;
with a paper parcel at her side containing a cap of state, almost
as tall, and quite as stiff, as a mitre.

Then, there were Dot's father and mother to come, in another little
chaise; and they were behind their time; and fears were
entertained; and there was much looking out for them down the road;
and Mrs. Fielding always would look in the wrong and morally
impossible direction; and being apprised thereof, hoped she might
take the liberty of looking where she pleased. At last they came:
a chubby little couple, jogging along in a snug and comfortable
little way that quite belonged to the Dot family; and Dot and her
mother, side by side, were wonderful to see. They were so like
each other.

Then, Dot's mother had to renew her acquaintance with May's mother;
and May's mother always stood on her gentility; and Dot's mother
never stood on anything but her active little feet. And old Dot -
so to call Dot's father, I forgot it wasn't his right name, but
never mind - took liberties, and shook hands at first sight, and
seemed to think a cap but so much starch and muslin, and didn't
defer himself at all to the Indigo Trade, but said there was no
help for it now; and, in Mrs. Fielding's summing up, was a good-
natured kind of man - but coarse, my dear.

I wouldn't have missed Dot, doing the honours in her wedding-gown,
my benison on her bright face! for any money. No! nor the good
Carrier, so jovial and so ruddy, at the bottom of the table. Nor
the brown, fresh sailor-fellow, and his handsome wife. Nor any one
among them. To have missed the dinner would have been to miss as
jolly and as stout a meal as man need eat; and to have missed the
overflowing cups in which they drank The Wedding-Day, would have
been the greatest miss of all.

After dinner, Caleb sang the song about the Sparkling Bowl. As I'm
a living man, hoping to keep so, for a year or two, he sang it
through.

And, by-the-by, a most unlooked-for incident occurred, just as he
finished the last verse.

There was a tap at the door; and a man came staggering in, without
saying with your leave, or by your leave, with something heavy on
his head. Setting this down in the middle of the table,
symmetrically in the centre of the nuts and apples, he said:

'Mr. Tackleton's compliments, and as he hasn't got no use for the
cake himself, p'raps you'll eat it.'

And with those words, he walked off.

There was some surprise among the company, as you may imagine.
Mrs. Fielding, being a lady of infinite discernment, suggested that
the cake was poisoned, and related a narrative of a cake, which,
within her knowledge, had turned a seminary for young ladies, blue.
But she was overruled by acclamation; and the cake was cut by May,
with much ceremony and rejoicing.

I don't think any one had tasted it, when there came another tap at
the door, and the same man appeared again, having under his arm a
vast brown-paper parcel.

'Mr. Tackleton's compliments, and he's sent a few toys for the
Babby. They ain't ugly.'

After the delivery of which expressions, he retired again.

The whole party would have experienced great difficulty in finding
words for their astonishment, even if they had had ample time to
seek them. But they had none at all; for the messenger had
scarcely shut the door behind him, when there came another tap, and
Tackleton himself walked in.

'Mrs. Peerybingle!' said the Toy-merchant, hat in hand. 'I'm
sorry. I'm more sorry than I was this morning. I have had time to
think of it. John Peerybingle! I'm sour by disposition; but I
can't help being sweetened, more or less, by coming face to face
with such a man as you. Caleb! This unconscious little nurse gave
me a broken hint last night, of which I have found the thread. I
blush to think how easily I might have bound you and your daughter
to me, and what a miserable idiot I was, when I took her for one!
Friends, one and all, my house is very lonely to-night. I have not
so much as a Cricket on my Hearth. I have scared them all away.
Be gracious to me; let me join this happy party!'

He was at home in five minutes. You never saw such a fellow. What
HAD he been doing with himself all his life, never to have known,
before, his great capacity of being jovial! Or what had the
Fairies been doing with him, to have effected such a change!

'John! you won't send me home this evening; will you?' whispered
Dot.

He had been very near it though!

There wanted but one living creature to make the party complete;
and, in the twinkling of an eye, there he was, very thirsty with
hard running, and engaged in hopeless endeavours to squeeze his
head into a narrow pitcher. He had gone with the cart to its
journey's end, very much disgusted with the absence of his master,
and stupendously rebellious to the Deputy. After lingering about
the stable for some little time, vainly attempting to incite the
old horse to the mutinous act of returning on his own account, he
had walked into the tap-room and laid himself down before the fire.
But suddenly yielding to the conviction that the Deputy was a
humbug, and must be abandoned, he had got up again, turned tail,
and come home.

There was a dance in the evening. With which general mention of
that recreation, I should have left it alone, if I had not some
reason to suppose that it was quite an original dance, and one of a
most uncommon figure. It was formed in an odd way; in this way.

Edward, that sailor-fellow - a good free dashing sort of a fellow
he was - had been telling them various marvels concerning parrots,
and mines, and Mexicans, and gold dust, when all at once he took it
in his head to jump up from his seat and propose a dance; for
Bertha's harp was there, and she had such a hand upon it as you
seldom hear. Dot (sly little piece of affectation when she chose)
said her dancing days were over; I think because the Carrier was
smoking his pipe, and she liked sitting by him, best. Mrs.
Fielding had no choice, of course, but to say HER dancing days were
over, after that; and everybody said the same, except May; May was
ready.

So, May and Edward got up, amid great applause, to dance alone; and
Bertha plays her liveliest tune.

Well! if you'll believe me, they have not been dancing five
minutes, when suddenly the Carrier flings his pipe away, takes Dot
round the waist, dashes out into the room, and starts off with her,
toe and heel, quite wonderfully. Tackleton no sooner sees this,
than he skims across to Mrs. Fielding, takes her round the waist,
and follows suit. Old Dot no sooner sees this, than up he is, all
alive, whisks off Mrs. Dot in the middle of the dance, and is the
foremost there. Caleb no sooner sees this, than he clutches Tilly
Slowboy by both hands and goes off at score; Miss Slowboy, firm in
the belief that diving hotly in among the other couples, and
effecting any number of concussions with them, is your only
principle of footing it.

Hark! how the Cricket joins the music with its Chirp, Chirp, Chirp;
and how the kettle hums!

* * * * *

But what is this! Even as I listen to them, blithely, and turn
towards Dot, for one last glimpse of a little figure very pleasant
to me, she and the rest have vanished into air, and I am left
alone. A Cricket sings upon the Hearth; a broken child's-toy lies
upon the ground; and nothing else remains.